Surely, Kapersky can't be bigger than Microsoft and other companies mentioned in the article? If they can fight it out, why can't the big guys fight it out? If only the big guys took a stance, and fight these trolls, it'll be nice.
It's very expensive. Kaspersky almost certainly paid its lawyers much, much more to take this case through summary judgment and trial prep than Microsoft paid the Troll to go away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm with you. But...it's easy to pontificate on the virtues of taking a principled stand against trolls when you're not responsible to greedy shareholders.
Does anyone know who owns Kaspersky? It would be interesting to note who was on the Board that OK'd the decision to open the company coffers to fund a fight against a patent troll.
What I don't understand is why more companies don't band together to share the cost of fighting against a patent troll. The article lists more than a dozen companies being sued by this patent troll. If they banded together their cost would be a fraction of the cost of a solo fight against a patent troll, while the patent troll would have to bear all the cost of proceeding with the suit.
It seems to me that if more companies did this, it would shift the balance of power away from the patent trolls, and make then think twice before proceeding with a lawsuit, especially if their patent is weak.
It'd be very interesting if legal teams from different companies banded together to fight a common foe. I'm surprised this doesn't happen (or maybe it does and we don't hear about it?)
If I was a defendant along with 10 other companies in a case like this, you can bet I'd be calling them up to start a friendly dialog about sharing resources and discovery results (whether they were competitors or not).
I can imagine that for larger legal teams, like Microsoft probably has, they have very strict procedures dealing with this sort of suit, making collaboration with other teams difficult. I don't know anyone on MS' legal team, so this is speculation ;).
That is exactly why biggies like Microsoft should fight it out, because they have boatload of cash at their disposal. Today they pay one troll. This will set a precedent, and soon they'll end up paying more and more trolls. But, if they fight from the beginning, it might deter other trolls. They should be able to justify the cost to their shareholders. After all, they make wrong acquisitions all the time, they overpay for acquisitions, they pay heavy fines for behaving badly etc. The shareholders are still around, aren't they?
Seems consistent with what we're seeing in this case. Very hard to imagine any VC greenlighting this sort of "it's the principle" litigation; very easy to imagine a founder doing so.
