LXer: ITC: How an obscure bureaucracy makes the world safe for patent trolls
 

Published at LXer:

The popularity of the ITC among patent holders was bolstered by the 2006 Supreme Court decision in eBay v. MercExchange. When a patent holder wins an infringement lawsuit, it is sometimes awarded an injunction against continued use of the patent by the infringer, in addition to monetary damages. The threat of such an injunction gives the patent holder extra leverage that it can use to extract larger settlements. For example, shortly before the eBay decision, the patent troll NTP used the threat of an injunction to force smartphone maker Research in Motion to fork over $612.5 million. But the eBay decision made it harder for patent holders to obtain these injunctions, tilting the playing field a bit more toward defendants.So patent holders looked for other remedies.

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