https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/03/patent_shakedown_fails_as_troll/

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[networks]

Networks

54 comment bubble on white

Cloudflare beats patent troll so badly it basically gives up

54 comment bubble on white

Networking giant pockets $225K, foe promises to stop suing and
abandons IP

icon Thomas Claburn
Thu 3 Oct 2024 // 23:10 UTC
#
   
  

Cloudflare on Thursday celebrated a victory over Sable Networks,
which the former described as a "patent troll."

That's a term for an individual or organization that exists solely to
makes patent infringement claims in the hope of winning a settlement
from defendants concerned about costly patent litigation.

"Sable sued Cloudflare back in March 2021," wrote Emily Terrell and
Patrick Nemeroff, respectively Cloudflare's senior counsel for
litigation and senior associate general counsel, in a write-up
Wednesday.

[networks]

"Sable is a patent troll. It doesn't make, develop, innovate, or sell
anything. Sable IP is merely a shell entity formed to monetize (make
money from) an ancient patent portfolio acquired by Sable Networks
from Caspian Networks in 2006."

[networks]
[networks]

Patent trolls have vexed the technology industry for years, sometimes
even drawing regulatory responses as happened over a decade ago when
opportunistic litigants focused on patents pertinent to the emerging
smartphone market. The Obama administration responded by issuing a
set of executive actions to curb abuses.

Lately, these patent profiteers have targeted the open source
community. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Linux Foundation
last month strengthened ties with United Patents, a company focused
on defending against predatory patent claims.

[networks]

Five other companies that we know of sued by Sable - Cisco, Fortinet,
Check Point, SonicWall, and Juniper Networks - settled out of court.
Splunk, meanwhile, fought back and managed last year to convince
Sable to dismiss its claim against the operation prior to its
takeover by, funnily enough, Cisco.

Internet services giant Cloudflare has notched up an even greater
victory. Facing an initial infringement lawsuit regarding around a
hundred claims related to four patents, the corporation ended up
having to deal with just a single patent violation claim.

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In February, Cloudflare prevailed when a Texas jury found it did not
infringe Sable's "micro-flow label switching" patent.

The biz both convinced the jury that it did not use the "micro-flow"
technology described in the US patent 7,012,919 and that the patent
was invalid because of prior art.

The existence of two earlier US patents, 6,584,071 and 6,680,933 for
router technology developed by Nortel Networks and Lucent in the
1990s convinced the jury that Sable's '919 patent should never have
been granted.

[networks]

The matter also saw Sable pledge not to pursue further actions of
this sort.

"In the end, Sable agreed to pay Cloudflare $225,000, grant
Cloudflare a royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio, and
to dedicate its patents to the public, ensuring that Sable can never
again assert them against another company," said Terrell and
Nemeroff.

The agreement means that Sable will tell the US Patent and Trademark
Office that it is abandoning its patent rights and no further claims
based on those patents will be possible.

The Register called Sable's listed phone number, and it is no longer
in service. The company's website is unresponsive and an attorney for
the firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Terrell and Nemeroff said that prior art submissions for the Sable
case related to Project Jengo, a crowd-sourced patent invalidation
initiative, will be accepted until November 2, 2024. At some point
thereafter, Cloudflare, which has already given out $70,000 in awards
for the case, will select final award winners.

"We're proud of our work fighting patent trolls and believe that the
outcome in this case sends a strong message that Cloudflare will
fight back against meritless patent cases and we will win," a
spokesperson for Cloudflare told The Register. (r)

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