The Tribune ran a story in its weekly legal industry column yesterday about Ray Niro, senior partner in local patent litigation firm Niro Scavone and a very accomplished trial attorney. Niro is in a dispute with anonymous blogger Troll Tracker. Troll Tracker focuses his blog on cases brought by patent licensing companies or non-practicing entities,* a number of whom are represented by Niro and the Niro Scavone firm. Because of the firm’s prominence in plaintiff-side patent work, Troll Tracker has also discussed both Niro and the firm. That drew Niro’s attention. Niro sent the anonymous Troll Tracker a letter accusing him of infringing a patent held by client Global Patent Holdings which the Tribune described as “covering the compression of data over the Internet, a technology that allows, for instance, Web sites to display JPEG images.” Niro then offered a $5,000 “bounty” for unmasking Troll Tracker’s identity, which he later increased to $10,000. Here is how Niro explained the bounty in the Tribune article:

I want to find out who this person is . . . . Is he an employee with Intel or Microsoft? Does he have a connection with serial infringers? I think that would color what he has to say."

I have generally stayed away from this story because it is closer to patent gossip than the Northern District IP litigation that is the focus of this blog. But I felt that I should cover it since it ran in the Tribune. 

* I have posted before about my dislike of the patent troll name – click here for a post which discussed the Troll Tracker blog and here for a post about Ray Niro’s article calling for an end to the use of patent troll. I think it carries unnecessary baggage and creates unnecessary animosity in legal proceedings that tend to generate plenty without injecting more. So, I was glad to see last week that Troll Tracker is pulling away from the use of the name – click here for Troll Tracker’s post about the term.