As I have talked about Patent Trolling, many people have said that they just can not believe that it is really TRUE that lawyers just create dummy corporations inside of empty offices and then use those fake companies to file serial lawsuits against dozens or hundreds of actual business.
They just can’t believe it’s true.
To find out how common this practice REALLY is, I took the first 55 Patent Infringement lawsuits that I could find that were filed in the Eastern District of Texas, flew to Texas, rented a car, and drove to the address of each and every “business” listed as a Plaintiff in those suits. Of the 55 “businesses” that claimed that they were harmed by Patent Infringement, ZERO of them were actual business producing goods and services as described by the Patent. ZERO. Of the 55 lawsuits that I tracked down, THREE were in a single private detectives office (Collins Investigations, 100 North College Avenue, Suite 1504, Tyler, TX), ONE was a box in a UPS store, and every single other “business” was an empty office, with no sign of life or any other activity.
ONE HUNDRED percent of the Patent cases I found were filed by dummy-corporations against real businesses.
ZERO percent were filed by legitimate businesses protecting their business.
Now, perhaps you don’t believe me.
SO, find out for yourself!
You can actually investigate Patent Trolling yourself, right from your own desk, to see if I am telling the truth or exaggerating.
Here is how:
Go to:
http://home.docketnavigator.com
Get “the Docket Report”… it is free for 30 days! This will email you each morning with all of the Patent Lawsuits filed the previous day, in one easy-to-skim email. When you get your handy, easy-to-peruse email in the morning, you will see each Patent lawsuit filed, with a link to each lawsuit.
The first thing you will notice is that companies that you have never heard of, typically with names like “Intellectual Property Holdings” (You see, they HOLD things. They don’t MAKE things. They HOLD things.) sue many companies at a time, many of which you have heard of and buy from every day. (Obviously, you payer higher prices when you purchase from these companies as a result of this).
Click on the link for each case, and you will see the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit PDF, you will see the “company” filing the lawsuit, and their address, right at the top of each lawsuit, and the lawyers representing the Patent Assertion Entities right at the bottom.
NOW, drop the shell-companies address into Google Maps, and go into 3-D street-view to SEE what is at that address!
In Google Street-View, do you see a real business, with the name of the business described in the lawsuit proudly emblazoned across the building?
Or do you see a nondescript, semi-abandoned office complex with no visible signs of life?
I already know what you will see in most cases, because I have already gone through this myself.
Try it for yourself and find out what is REALLY going on! You certainly cannot count on getting the truth from anyone else!
Now, if you subscribe to the Docket Report to really investigate this for yourself, you will also see an exception to the common cases that I describe above.
And you will notice that there is only ONE common exception: Pharmaceutical companies.
Why?
As the government has PROPOSED to fix the Patent System to end the wide-spread extortion committed by Patent Trolls, one group of lobbyists has consistently tried to STOP the system from ever being fixed: The Pharmaceutical lobby.
Why is this?
Well, if you look around just a little bit you will quickly learn the following:
Pharmaceutical companies commonly charge OVER ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR, PER PATIENT, for Cancer Drugs.
Since the vast majority of that money is Paid by Medicare, and therefor simply dumped onto our children in the form of the National Debt, and the patient need only pay 10% of that price at the moment he is dying, these obscene prices for the medication are routinely paid.
WHY are these medicines so OBSCENELY expensive? Well, NORMALLY, competition from other companies would drive quality up and prices down: Whoever charges the fairest price wins when there is competition. But what if competition could be ELIMINATED, so that the Pharma Companies could charge ANYTHING THEY WANT? How would the Pharma companies eliminate competition? The answer is obvious: Patents. They Patent whatever they do, so nobody can compete with them. With the rules of competition now flushed away, the Pharma companies can charge any price that they like, milk 90% of what they charge from the taxpayer via Medicare, and leave the Patent system in place to guarantee that they can keep doing it indefinitely. Of course almost no individual could ever pay $100,000/year for some pills, but when 90% of it is just dumped into the National Debt, nobody takes any action to stop it.
And, if you bother to subscribe to the Docket Report, then you will see the proof of what I am decribing floating into your email inbox: Every morning.