Patent Troll Sues Online Companies Over Automated Emails
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on August 29, 2007 at 3:25:58 PM
I love how we grant patents to things that are obvious, even when they were filed. This patent company is suing many online companies over their use of automated response emails. I believe that vacation responders and the like have been around for much longer.
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A more likely scenario appears to be a payday for the plaintiff. "It looks like Polaris IP is in the business of licensing patent rights and has no desire to enforce its requested injunction," said Dennis Crouch, associate professor of law at University of Missouri School of Law and the author of the law blog Patently-O, in an e-mail. "I expect that Polaris IP will be willing to settle these cases for what it believes is a reasonable six- or seven-digit figure." Crouch pointed out that the message routing patent at issue has been involved in litigation many times. "There are no published opinions associated with these cases and they have all been settled," he said. Polaris IP, Crouch observed, "appears to be part of a web of IP-related companies associated with attorney David Pridham." These companies include Orion IP, Constellation IP, IP Navigation Group, Cushion Technologies, CT IP Holdings, Triton, Circinus IP, and Firepond.