LD Products Targeted by Patent Troll

LD Products, a cartridge remanufacturer based in Long Beach, California has become the target of yet another lawsuit, this time from a patent troll.

The company has been working its way through various US courts and may well now end up in the Supreme Court over a patent right dispute brought on by Lexmark International.

Now, according to court documents released to Recycling Times Media, LD Products is subject to litigation by a firm that calls itself Shipping & Transit.

Shipping & Transit is allegedly a patent troll—a company or person that purchases a patent and then sues another company claiming its products infringe the purchased patent.

Shipping and Transit, which is located in Boynton Beach, Florida, USA, is asking the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida to enter judgment against LD Products. They are seeking damages, increased damages, attorneys’ fees and costs, and a permanent injunction prohibiting LD Products from further infringement.

LD Products is accused of directly infringing 4 patents (namely 6,415,207, 6,904,359, 6,763,299, 7,400,970) through its various online tracking and shipping systems used by their clients to determine purchasing and delivery confirmations made on their www.123Inkjets.com and www.4InkJets.com e-commerce stores.

Recycling Times has been advised, “the four patents were issued between 2002-2008,” and are “mainly related to the online commercial method of purchase processes.”

Other companies involved in selling and shipping cartridges, and possibly other products as well, from their respective online stores are potentially at risk as well from this patent troll.

According to Dr Harvey Levenson, Professor Emeritus, Cal Poly State University, in California, trolls are the epitome of greed, thoughtlessness, and unethical behaviour. “They are impacting the survival, growth, and development of printing,” he told Recycling Times. Levenson says trolls are no different to extortionists who have no sense of business morals and ethics, and will destroy the print industry if allowed to keep going unchallenged. Levenson is so passionate about this issue that he recently wrote a white paper on the matter, providing solutions. He urges those being sued by patent trolls not to settle by paying the fees requested. He says the best solution is to bring the alleged patent infringements before the Patent & Trademark Office to have the patents invalidated. Recycling Times’ Director David Gibbons has posted his weekly Just A Minute editorial comment online about patent trolls—watch vimeo.com/176283530.

According to Electronic Frontier Foundation, “Shipping and Transit, LLC are not new players to the patent troll game.” They claim, despite their current SEO-unfriendly name that make it difficult to find information, there’s actually “lots of information out there related to these trolls, just under different name.”

To that end, more useful information can be found by searching for ArrivalStar (instead of “Shipping and Transit, LLC”). It would appear the new trolls are closely related to the old trolls.

“A recent district court filing reveals that Shipping and Transit, LLC is now the owner of the patents previously licensed and owned by ArrivalStar. According to a document filed with the Florida Secretary of State, Shipping and Transit LLC’s members are Peter Sirianni and Martin Kelly Jones. Based on these documents, we believe that although there was likely a technical change in “ownership,” the people “authorized to manage” Shipping and Transit, LLC appear to be the same people that were associated with ArrivalStar.

More information is available at: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/psa-shipping-and-transit-llc-and-electronic-communication-technologies-llc-are-not

At this time, LD Products has not indicated how they will handle this matter.

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