An infamous patent troll has once again launched a series of lawsuits, but that?s not really the news. It?s the targets and the patents that form the basis of the suits that stand out. Since March, Chicago-based Innovatio has been working with its legal team, Niro, Haller & Niro, of the same city, to sue restaurant and coffee shop chains that provide Wi-Fi to customers.
As of September, the firm has also moved to target some of the country?s largest hotel chains for offering Wi-Fi to customers. last month, Niro filed six infringement suits against hotel chains, according to a report from the Patent Examiner, a UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Project. Niro lawyer Matthew McAndrews has filed a total of 13 infringement suits since March on behalf of Innovatio, for 17 out of 31 patents it holds on "wireless local area network" (aka "WLAN").
Innovatio, said Patent Examiner, came to hold ownership of patents "invented in the 1990s and early 2000s, in part or solely by Robert Meier and the late Robert Mahany." The developers worked for companies subsequently acquired by semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom?and the series of patents "all landed in Innovatio?s hands on Feb. 28, about one week before Innovatio began asserting them in litigation." It?s currently unclear how or why Broadcom ceded control of the patents to Innovatio.
The Techdirt blog notes that, while Innovatio originally concentrated on corporations, the latest round of suits against hotels is focused on individual franchisees, "yes, the small businesses who own individual hotels and probably have no idea how to deal with a patent infringement lawsuit?all because they dared to offer WiFi somewhere in their hotels." Niro takes it easy on the hoteliers by making the dollar amount of the suits pretty small, between $2,300 and $5,000?cheaper than hiring a lawyer. Patent Lawyer offers perspective on the scale of the efforts: over five days in September, Niro filed five lawsuits against more than 220 individual hotels in Illinois.
What has likely baffled the litigants, says Dave Donoghue, partner in Holland & Knight?s Intellectual Property Group in Chicago (as quoted in the Patent Examiner article): "when you use the industry standard, you assume it?s free of patent infringement." Even McAndrews acknowledged the ubiquity of Wi-Fi. he compares it to a "fundamental utility like gas or electricity," via Patent Examiner, but that didn?t stop him from attempting to license the patents to the fullest extent possible, which some have speculated, may include every single person who uses Wi-Fi. Yes, everyone.
Analysis of a lawsuit filed by Niro for Innovatio on may 13, 2011 against Grand Sierra Resort & Casino of Reno, Nev., Innovatio IP Ventures, LLC v. MEI-GSR Holdings LLC dba Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, sheds light on how the Niro lawsuits work. In MEI-GSR, Niro focused on the aforementioned 17 Innovatio-owned WLAN patents, asking in the suit?s Prayer for Relief that, "Grand Sierra and all related entities and their officers, agents, employees, representatives, servants, successors, assigns all person in active concert or participation with any of them, directly or indirectly, be preliminarily and permanently enjoined from using, or contributing or inducing the use of, any WLAN product, system or network that infringes any WLAN patent."
According to the firm website, Niro, Haller & Niro has 30 attorneys (five of which share the surname Niro). Based in Chicago (just down the street from the address Innovatio listed in its Grand Sierra suit), the firm has this to say about its attorneys: "while most of our lawyers have formal engineering or science training and are registered patent attorneys, they are first and foremost trained to be effective advocates in court." interestingly, IP Law & Business, an ALM publication, profiled the firm founder, Raymond Niro Sr., back in 2006, calling him "the original patent troll," with the name originating "in 2001 Intel Corporation assistant general counsel Peter Detkin coined the term to characterize Niro and his client TechSearch LLC when Intel was defending a patent suit against them."
And now that the firm is working with Innovatio, could it be that they hit a new low by targeting the "average Joe" next. Would Innovatio (and its law firm) really target every individual Wi-Fi user? Calling all of this a small business shakedown, Time magazine?s Techland blog sees that hysteria could result if Niro, Haller & Niro focused on the general public next.
So how did Innovatio come to control these patents? IP Law looked at the case that started the Niro firm down the path toward being anointed the original patent troll. In 2001 Raymond Niro came across the opportunity to bid on patents held by Schneider Automation. Questioning his own ethics ("he was worried that suing over a patent he owned was unethical"), Niro figured it better to seek an outside investor to take control of the patent, and began "calling up former clients to tell them about the patent and offering his legal representation on contingency."
I can?t be sure if this is what happened with Innovatio, but Niro?s Schneider move netted him millions of dollars (success he duplicated multiple times if ALM?s archived coverage is any indication). But after coffee shops, supermarkets, casinos, and hotels?are you next?
This article originally appeared in Law Technology News.
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Source: http://lawyerwo.com/attack-of-the-wi-fi-patent-troll/
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