Author: Joe Mullin

Patent trolls don't fare well at the Supreme Court. When they show up, their cases tend to result in decisions that are ruinous for the profit margins of their industry. Two prominent examples: the 2006 eBay v. MercExchange case effectively ended trolls' abilities to get injunctions, and the 2014 Alice Corp. case made it far easier for patent defendants to invalidate abstract software patents.

And yet, the cases keep coming. The most recent example is Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC v. Lee, a case that was resolved earlier this week with an 8-0 opinion dismantling arguments presented by Cuozzo, a patent-holding entity controlled by two New York patent lawyers, Daniel Mitry and Timothy Salmon. The two attorneys own dozens of other patent shell companies through their consultancy, Empire IP.

What were Mitry and Salmon hoping for? Using the Cuozzo case as their vehicle, they hoped to tweak changes in the rules for "inter partes reviews," or IPRs, a proceeding created by Congress in 2012 that allows the patent office to take a second look at patents to see if they should never have been issued in the first place. While the tech sector still seeks legislative reform to end the spate of "patent troll" lawsuits, IPRs have been an effective way to shut down some patent cases at a fraction of the cost of a full-blown court trial.

The lawyers behind the Prenda Law "copyright trolling" enterprise have lost their key appeal and will have to pay more than $230,000 in sanctions.

The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a 12-page ruling [PDF] upholding the sanction order that began Prenda's downfall, issued by US District Judge Otis Wright in 2013. Today's ruling defends Wright's sanction in its entirety and doesn't give one iota of credit to the copyright troll's claims that its due process rights were violated.

Prenda Law, masterminded by two lawyers named John Steele and Paul Hansmeier, operated by filing massive lawsuits against thousands of defendants, accusing them of illegally downloading porn movies. After using the subpoena process to identify the subscribers behind the IP addresses, they'd send threatening letters about the lawsuit. Many defendants settled, either out of fear of humiliation or inability to pay for litigation. Typically, they paid around $4,000.

Google successfully made its case to a jury last month that its use of Java APIs in Android was "fair use," and the verdict rejected Oracle's claim that the mobile system infringed its copyrights.

After Google argued its case, though, Oracle filed a motion arguing that the judge should decide as a matter of law that fair use didn't cover it. In the wake of the jury's pro-Google verdict, Oracle's motion was its last hope of a trial victory.

It didn't happen. US District Judge William Alsup shot down the motion on Wednesday. The same order also denied Google's motion making similar arguments, filed at the close of trial but before the jury's verdict.

Yahoo will auction off nearly 3,000 patents and pending patent applications, according to The Wall Street Journal.

News of the patent sale came late yesterday, not long after it was reported that Verizon is submitting a $3 billion bid for Yahoo's core Internet business. The sale of the core Web business will include about 500 US patents and more than 600 pending applications, separate from the larger group going in the standalone patent sale.

Yahoo moved 2,659 patents into a patent-holding company called Excalibur IP LLC, which was seen as a first step toward a patent sale.

A patent and trademark lawsuit over foam arrows used in live-action role playing, or LARPing, has been thrown out because the Indiana federal judge overseeing the case ruled that he lacked jurisdiction. For defendant Jordan Gwyther, who owns the community website Larping.org, it's a victory, although a narrow one.

Global Archery, an Indiana company that licenses its own foam arrows for archery games, sued Gwyther back in October. Global Archery founder John Jackson said that the foam-tipped arrows sold by Gwyther violated a patent he owns, and that Gwyther's marketing on search engines infringes his trademark rights.

Earlier this year, Gwyther took his fight public with a fundraising campaign, and published a video in which he implored his customers and fans to "Save LARP Archery!" That led to Global Archery asking for a gag order to stop Gwyther from speaking about the case.

Have you ever read a patent and thought, "I feel like I've seen that in a Star Trek episode?"

Well, this month the Electronic Frontier Foundation's patent sharpshooters have found a patent that quite literally had all of its key claim elements described by Star Trek—specifically, a 1998 episode of Deep Space Nine.

Earlier this week, EFF lawyer Vera Ranieri described the latest "Stupid Patent of the Month."  US Patent No. 6,612,985 is a "method and system for monitoring and treating a patient" and is owned by My Health Inc. That company appears to be a non-practicing entity, and it has filed at least 30 lawsuits in the Eastern District of Texas, a well-known patent troll haven.

Despite a final verdict, the recent Oracle v. Google trial leaves plenty of questions about the future of APIs, fair use, copyright, development, and more. While their views do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica as a whole, our staffers wanted to take a look at the outcome and potential ramifications from both sides. Below, Joe Mullin says Google's win sends a powerful message against a familiar legal tactic. Elsewhere, Peter Bright argues that software is about to suffer. You can also find guest op-eds from professor Pamela Samuelson (pro-Google) and attorney Annette Hurst (pro-Oracle).

We may never know with certainty why the jury in Oracle v. Google decided in Google's favor, but I can make a pretty good guess.

Like the jury, I'm no expert. I've been reporting on technology law for years, but becoming an experienced journalist is really just mastering the fine art of non-expertise. I have a pretty good conceptual idea of what an API is, derived entirely from listening to more knowledgeable people talk about this case. But if you showed me a block of code, I couldn’t pick out the APIs or "declaring code" at issue.

Remember the Florida apartment complex that got a lot of attention for giving tenants a contract banning harsh online reviews? A Utah apartment complex is going one better: instead of squelching negative reviews, owners of the complex are trying to coerce tenants into giving positive feedback.

Last week, tenants at City Park Apartments, located in Salt Lake City, received a "Facebook Addendum" posted on their doors, outlining what's expected of them. Most jarring was a requirement that they "friend" the complex within five days.

The predictable results are already rolling in. Rather than a flood of "likes," the City Park Apartments contract became a story on KSL, a local TV station. By Sunday, The Associated Press picked up the story and made it national. The complex hasn't gotten the positive feedback it hoped for; instead, it has racked up more than 800 one-star reviews on an unofficial Facebook page.

SAN FRANCISCO—Following a two-week trial, a jury has found that Google's Android operating system does not infringe Oracle-owned copyrights because its re-implementation of 37 Java APIs is protected by "fair use."

The verdict was reached after three days of deliberation.

The verdict in Google's favor ends the trial, which began earlier this month. If Oracle had won, the same jury would have gone into a "damages phase" to determine how much Google should pay. Because Google won, the trial is over, although the result will surely be appealed.

Oracle's lawyers have made their final pitch to paint Google as a copyright outlaw, and the decision is now up to a 10-person jury. The jurors are deliberating in a room on the 19th floor of the US Federal Courthouse in San Francisco. Deliberations have gone on for two days now, and the jury will return to court Thursday to continue its debate.

During a 90-minute closing argument on Monday, Oracle attorney Peter Bicks said every fair use factor weighed in Oracle's favor and that Google's behavior showed "bad faith." Here are some of the slides Bicks showed jurors during his closing argument.

We also asked Google for some of the visuals it showed to the jury, but Google declined to provide them. (These in-court visuals aren't evidence, according to the rules of the court, so it's up to the parties as to whether or not to show them outside court.)