Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Recommind: Through the Looking Glass (With A Dash of Hamlet)
June 21, 2011
Unless there is more breaking news, this will be my last Recommind post referencing what U.K. e-discovery (ok, e-disclosure across the pond) expert Chris Dale calls "the predictive coding wars."
Chris has written an informative and insightful post on Recommind Against the World. Beware, it is lengthy, though delightfully peppered with Humpty Dumpty and "Sink the Bismarck" references – even Hamlet gets to strut the stage. I can well believe it took him a whole Saturday to write this post. Nicely balanced, this post will bring you fully up-to-date.
Patent attorney Ron Chichester offered some further thoughts as follows:
"We can judge Recommind's own assessment of the strength of their by noting who they sue first. If they sue "one of the big guys" then they think they have a strong patent and are likely to win. By
knocking off one of the big guys (who are able to obtain competent counsel), then the other companies in that space are likely to fall in line and pay the royalties. On the other hand, if they sue one of the
little guys first, it usually signifies that the plaintiff doesn't have much faith in their patent and only goes after the little guys who can't afford to defend themselves. Obviously, this game can take some strange twists. One of the "big guys" can be singled out for litigation. Then, during the pendency of that lawsuit, the plaintiff offers to drop the suit by allowing the defendant to take a non-royalty license of the plaintiff's patent. Some confidentiality clauses are included in the settlement agreement/license. For the plaintiff's case, he can trumpet that a "big guy" has licensed the patent, making the remaining players nervous. For the defendant big guy, he gets a nuisance off his docket for next to nothing.
Secondly, I know that you don't think much of this patent, but do your readers mind putting some proof on the pudding? In other words, if they think the patent is obvious or not novel, can they tell us why?
Are they sitting on some prior art to which the Patent Office was not privy? If they are truly worried about patent trolls, maybe the community should start putting together a repository of prior art that
can be used to ward off patents such as the one Recommind owns. Other communities have done this successfully."
Thanks for writing Ron. In matters of patent law, I am woefully out of my league, but would be happy to hear the thoughts of others.
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