● 01.28.18
●● On Patent Trolls or Bullies Such as the CAO Group and WiLAN
Posted in America, Patents at 2:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: CAO Group starts nuisance litigation against BIOLASE and WiLAN, which is the most famous Canadian patent troll, is looking for more victims to extract ‘protection’ money from
The USPTO grants many patents, probably far too many in fact (we’ll write more about that later). It leaves a lot more companies vulnerable to nuisance litigation, often without any merit.
In a defensive press release a few days ago, BIOLASE complained about patent bullying, alleging that “the latest attempt by CAO Group, Inc. to use patent litigation” is “Frivolous” and “Abusive” (those two words were used in the headline). From the opening paragraph:
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BIOLASE, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIOL), the world’s leading dental laser company, today released the following statement in response to the latest attempt by CAO Group, Inc. to use patent litigation to try to improve its competitive position in the marketplace.
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Without knowing the pertinent details of the underlying patents it is hard to judge the merit of the lawsuit, but what CAO Group hopes to accomplish is removal of products/services from the market (or passage of bucket-loads of money). Who would be served by that other than lawyers?
Speaking of lawyers, WiLAN (sometimes known as Wi-LAN) is effectively a patent troll. It’s just a litigation firm. Patent Troll Tracker wrote about these people moving to Texas more than a decade ago and they sued a lot in the following few years under Chief Executive Jim Skippen (he is just a lawyer who had worked for other patent trolls and he still there, based on Wikipedia, in the same position).
This Canadian patent parasite, WiLAN, is featured by the patent trolls’ lobby (IAM), which days ago said that it got another victim and “plans to offer similar deal structure to other licensees” (by “deal” they mean ‘protection’ money and “other agreements may be on the way,” IAM said). To quote:
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We reached out to Michael Vladescu, Chief Operating Officer of WiLAN, who has explained several key elements of the deal in finer detail for the benefit of IAM readers.
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The very fact that IAM acts as a mouthpiece for WiLAN says a lot about IAM. WiLAN is one of the bigger patent trolls out there. █
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