Attorney Fees
Patent Holding Company on the Defensive in Attorney Fee Dispute
Posted May 21, 2008, 04:41 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A patent holding company that unsuccessfully sued Palm and other defendants is now on the defensive, as Palm pursues attorney fees awarded by a judge who questioned the holding company’s pretrial investigation and discovery conduct.
In an effort to recover the awarded fees, Palm has filed a motion seeking to uncover the assets of the holding company, E-Pass Technologies, the Recorder reports.
Some litigators are praising such aggressive tactics, saying they might teach patent trolls a lesson and make them think twice about pursuing unfounded litigation, the story says. Others say companies seeking to enforce awards of attorney fees may find after expensive litigation that there is no money to pay.
Last year U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen awarded about $1 million in attorney fees to a Palm spinoff called Palmsource, about $500,000 total to Palm and 3Com, and $400,000 each to and VISA USA and VISA International. He made the award after saying E-Pass had conducted a “questionable” pretrial investigation and had caused "unwarranted delay and obstruction" during the discovery phase of litigation against Palmsource, the story says. He made similar findings in the other cases.
E-Pass is appealing the attorney fee rulings.
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Comments
Posted by associate - 6 months, 2 weeks, 18 hours, 19 minutes ago
How do you define patent troll again?
But seroiusly, it’s incorrect to mix sanctions for abusive discovery practices with the idea of “patent trolls”. More issue clarity would be appreciated in future articles since this is supposed to be a LEGAL publication.
By the way, the largest patent holding company in the world, IBM, invented the term “patent troll” to describe a small company that they were litigating against.