SlickEdit Community
SlickEdit Product Discussion => SlickEdit® => Topic started by: Clark on March 05, 2014, 04:37:30 PM
-
Greetings!
I wanted to keep you up to date on whats going on with SlickEdit.
In October of 2012, Uniloc USA, Inc. filed a lawsuit against SlickEdit, Inc., alleging patent infringement (U.S. patent 5,579,222) concerning a license management system.
Uniloc USA, Inc. is a patent-assertion entity or “patent troll,†i.e. a company whose sole business is to sue software companies including Adobe, Microsoft, Sony, and Symantec. It has sued more than a dozen companies over this patent.
In an unusual turn of events, after more than a year of litigation Uniloc USA, Inc. asked the Court to dismiss its own lawsuit against SlickEdit, Inc. This came a week after the court held a three-hour Markman hearing on February 13, 2014 in which SlickEdit argued that Uniloc’s patent covered far less than what Uniloc was claiming.
Make no mistake, this is a BIG win for SlickEdit in what amounts to be a David vs. Goliath scenario.
Patent infringement suits are considered extremely costly to defend against. Even in cases like this where there is no infringement, small companies are often forced to settle due to the astronomical legal fees associated with patent cases.
I knew SlickEdit did not infringe. I hired a great attorney and worked closely with him. We were able to put together a solid case and ultimately saved the company a lot of money.
I interviewed nine different patent attorneys at nine different firms and easily chose Tim Shannon of Verrill Dana, LLP. Tim and his team mastered the patent, mastered our product inside and out, and led a claim construction argument that literally threatened to derail Uniloc’s entire national campaign. Tim never let up and got us a great result. I highly recommend his service.
Glad to be done with this mess. Now I can continue to have a blast working on the product!
Clark
-
Congratulations - This are really good news and definitely worth a big HP !!!
Those pesky patent trolls.. >:( >:( >:(
HS2
-
:o I had no idea this was happening or touched SE.
at last fresh air again for the all SE devs and managers : )
-
Congratulations - it seems that companies often make the decision that it makes financial sense to just pay up. I'm glad that you guys made a stand, and even more glad that it worked!
Now I can continue to have a blast working on the product!
Yes!
-
A year of litigation! How much did that cost? Can you claim costs off Uniloc?
-
Great work Clark!
-
A year of litigation! How much did that cost? Can you claim costs off Uniloc?
In Tyler Texas, don't bother trying to get attorneys fees. That's one of the reasons patent trolls sue companies there. If it were anywhere else, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten attorneys fees.
The cost was expensive but I won't post the amount here. I have tried to help some of the other companies who were sued over this patent. There are quite a few companies being sued over this patent. I suspect most or all could benefit from the attorney team I used. I really picked a great team but it took a while to find them.
-
Hope they give you a bonus Clark!
-
I find it very disconcerting that a small company like Slickedit can suffer so greatly when they did nothing wrong. I'd like to blow the c-r-a-p out of Uniloc and software patents in general.
-
Here's another company being sued by Uniloc
http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/ (http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/)
- estimate, 1.5 million dollars to defend.
-
I'm happy to say it didn't cost us anywhere near that.
1.5 million is a typical estimate if you have to go to trial. I would expect for very large companies the cost would be significantly higher. Larger companies will often have more than one product with completely different implementations which infringe. Keep in mind, these costs I'm mentioning DO NOT include loss of you or you employees time!
[suspicious][/suspicious]
If our lawsuit went to trial, it would have been significantly less than 1 million. If other companies would use the attorneys we used, I'm sure they would save a lot of money because they already know the patent, Uniloc, and the Markman hearing judge cold. I'm fine with providing any other companies with any of the documents that our attorneys wrote on behalf of SlickEdit.
One thing that was very unusual in our case and definitely saved us money was the fact that I'm the CEO and CTO of SlickEdit. I was able to provide the attorneys with almost any information they asked for (source code, chess moves, you name it). This saved the attorneys time and saved us money. This is soooooo not typically the case.
-
Awesome news ;D! Way to go Clark/legal team!
-
Clark++ ;)