If a patentee delays filing suit for an unreasonable and inexcusable length of time from the time he knew or reasonably should have known of his claim against an infringer, and the delay operates to the prejudice or injury of the infringer, the patentee may be barred from recovering any damages which accrued prior to the filing of suit.

Strange as it may seem, many (misguided) people dislike lawyers, deriding their character, disparaging their reputation for honesty and questioning their parentage. Such people are wont to collect and endlessly repeat stories about lawyers’ indiscretions – as if that really proved anything. They point, for example, to Scott W. Rothstein, accused of running a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme. Picky, picky. Bernie Madoff ran a $50 billion Ponzi scheme and he wasn’t a lawyer.

Some cases simply cry out to be the subject of a blog, but none more so than Pfizer Inc. v. Arye Sachs and JetAngel.com.

Some patentees never give up; they persist in their efforts to enforce their patents against infringers, even to the point of petitioning the Supreme Court to change the existing patent law relating to the determination of patent invalidity due to obviousness. (Acushnet Company v. Callaway Golf Company)

Large businesses, especially those found guilty of patent infringement, malign N.P.E.s – which they call “trolls,” by claiming that the N.P.E.s are asserting invalid or trivial patents and are, thereby, perverting the patent system. Well, we now have a scholarly study, conducted by independent researchers, which refutes this rant. (Patent Trolls on Markets for Technology – An Empirical Analysis of Trolls’ Patent Acquisitions by Timo Fischer and Joachim Henkel of the Technical University of Munich.)

Another chapter of “What Were They Thinking?” was recently written by Acacia Research Corp. (DNT LLC vs. Sprint Nextel Corp. et al.)

Some weeks ago, we wrote about a suit seeking a declaration that patents on genes are unconstitutional and, in particular, violate the plaintiffs’ right of free speech - The ACLU – Fighting The Right To Life – And The Right To Patent It. At that time, the defendants – the USPTO and Myriad Genetics Inc. – had moved to dismiss the case because, inter alia, it allegedly failed to state a legally recognizable claim of any constitutional violation.

It is not often that a defendant in a patent infringement suit is able to win a summary judgment of non-infringement. Usually, the plaintiff is able to defeat a motion for summary judgment by producing a “declaration” (lawyerspeak for “a document ghost-written by lawyers”) of its “technical expert” (lawyerspeak for “degree-holding mouthpiece for the lawyers”) to raise a “substantial question of material fact.” Usually, but not always. (Intellectual Science And Technology, Inc. v. Sony Electronics, Inc. et al.)