TED: How I Beat a Patent Troll

Drew Curtis gave a talk about how he defeated a patent troll at its own game. At the start, Curtis was confused why he was actually getting sued and it turned out that this company had a patent that created a way of communicating news via email and he was in violation of their patent. In fact, Curtis’ company was not in violation but as it turns out it is on the side of the defendant to prove that everything they have ever done does not go against their patent instead of the firm looking for the violation. As the lawsuit went on, Curtis asked the firm for pictures or screenshots of these violations to which their lawyer could not provide any. On average, a patent troll lawsuit costs 2 million dollars if you win so many people settle out of the cases because you will spend lots of money and be forced into a NDA so no one knows the terms. In the case of Curtis, since they were unable to provide any direct violations, he was able to get away without paying anything besides the lawyers’ fees to get out of it. This goes to show that it is possible to fight a troll you just gotta stick to your guns and tell them it will be a long nasty process for them to get a dime out of you.