From the "fact is stranger than fiction" department, we report on the bizarre case of a giant Japanese corporation suing a giant Taiwanese corporation in a court in Madison, Wisconsin. (Ricoh Company v. Quanta Computer Corp.)

Ricoh is an electronics manufacturer employing approximately 100,000 people, of whom over 40,000 are in the U.S. It produces, among other things, photocopiers, printers and digital cameras, with annual sales of about $20B.

We have previously commented upon the shabby treatment accorded small, non-practicing entities (NPEs) by the courts. Well, we are now able to report that, in at least one respect, large corporations are being treated in like manner to small ones. A large corporation, seeking to enforce a patent which it does not practice, i.e. a large NPE, gets the same short shrift as a small NPE. (Pitney Bowes Inc. et al. v. Zumbox, Inc.)

A reader of intellectual property trade publications is certainly aware that there exists a degree of antipathy towards “Non-Practicing Entities” (“N.P.E.s”), wherein such entities are pejoratively known as “trolls.” Most of this is instigated by the corporate infringers (“scumbags”) sued by the N.P.E.s. Much of it is unwarranted; some, however, is not.