April 25, 2015 archive

TV maker Vizio may finally get paid after beating 17th patent troll

by Joe Mullin, Ars Technica

Apr 24, 2015 1:30pm EDT

Television maker Vizio is one of the companies that fights back. It’s beaten no less than 16 “non-practicing entities,” and last week, the company released a statement showcasing its list of patent troll cases that ended in a key statistic: “$0 to plaintiff.” The list includes the usual bizarrely named shells, like “E-Contact Techs” and “Man Machine Interface,” as well as well-known patent holding companies like Walker Digital and Intellectual Ventures (whose patents were used by Pragmatus Telecom, one of the shells Vizio sent packing.)

Now, the company is trying to collect fees from one of its opponents, a company called Oplus Technologies. For the first time, it stands a real chance, in a case where it spent more than $1 million to win. Two recent Supreme Court decisions make it easier for victorious defendants to collect fees in patent cases. The TV maker is up against a storied patent plaintiffs’ firm, Chicago-based Niro, Haller & Niro, that has fought for Oplus tooth and nail.

Vizio won its patent case against Oplus last year. After a skirmish over legal fees, US District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer published an opinion (PDF) detailing Oplus’ “overly aggressive” and “uncooperative” style of litigation that was “outside the bounds of professional behavior.”

“At each step of the case, Vizio’s credibility increased while Oplus gathered rope to hang itself,” she wrote. Yet Pfaelzer denied Vizio legal fees. Now, the Federal Circuit has ruled (PDF) that Pfaelzer needs to reconsider that decision.

“The course of this litigation was anything but ordinary,” wrote a panel of three appeals judges. “The court issued an opinion with numerous findings regarding Oplus’s litigation misconduct,” and the “egregious conduct” warranted giving Vizio a second shot at fees.

For Vizio, the company feels that it’s on the verge of getting vindication for a long-standing policy of not backing down to patent trolls.

Conflict of interest alert!  My primary TV is a cheap 19″ Vizio Backlit LCD that actually has pretty good viewing angles for an LCD (but not nearly as good as an LED) and will do 1920×1080 as a monitor substitute in a pinch which is the same as my BenQ GW 2250 22″ though not nearly as nice (my other monitor is a Princton VF723 15″ 1280×1024).

Since we were just talking about Homer, his other great work was The Odyssey which was considered by most to be as fictional as The Illiad until Schliemann discovered what he thought was Troy (and was, just not on the level he identified).  It is certainly peopled with exotic locales and fantasical monsters which may or may not correspond to actual geography and now extinct creatures (yes on the first, no on the second for me).

One thing that is hard in this day of 100 hour wars, instant communication, and rapid transit to wrap your mind around is that someone could go off and fight a 10 year war and take 10 years to get home.  To be fair, Troy was a seige with individual challenges and small unit skirmishes until Odysseus figured out a way to breach the walls.  We’ve spent spent how long in Afghanistan now?  And the Hundred Years War lasted, well, a hundred years more or less (this is not a trick question).

During his return Odysseus only spent 3 years wandering around (many sea voyages in the Age of Sail lasted as long or longer) and then another 7 as a captive of Calypso.  I’ve met people who were locked up longer than that.

Anyway, the central tale of The Odyssey (after eliminating all the crypto-zoology and magic) is the return of Odysseus in disguise to find his wife besieged by many moochers and people looking to steal his stuff who he then proceeds to kill in a bloodbath of epic proportions.

Remind me.  What are the Rules of Opera?

The 3 rules of Opera.

1. It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
2. The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
3. Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.

Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.

Why, this is perfect!  As for the wacky excuses?  Well, what would you tell your significant other after 10 years, 7 of them spent shacking up with someone else, standing covered in gore in the living room among heaps of dead bodies?

Honey, I’m home?

Montaverdi is considered one of the revolutionaries of Baroque music.  His L’Ofeo is just about the earliest recognizable Opera still regularly performed.  It was written in 1607 as near as we can tell when he was about 40.  Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria was written in 1640, 3 years before his death at the age of 76 and with L’incoronazione di Poppea (1642) is considered one of his 3 greatest works.

What distinguished Monteverdi from many other Opera composers of his generation was the lack of moral judgement (a hold over from the sacred music that was the money machine of the time) and humanity of his characters, something I think is captured by this contemporary performance in casual dress with period instruments and orchestration.

It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race, that hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees!

All times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone on shore, and when through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades vext the dim sea-  I am become a name for always roaming with a hungry heart.

Much have I seen and known.  Cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments.  Myself not least, but honored of them all.

And drunk delight of battle with my peers far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!  As though to breathe were life.

Life piled on life were all too little, and of one to me scant remains, but every hour is saved from that eternal silence something more, a bringer of new things.

And vile it were for some three suns to store and hoard myself and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bounds of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle, well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill this labour, by slow prudence to make mild a rugged people, and through soft degrees subdue them to the useful and the good.  Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness, and pay meet adoration to my household gods when I am gone.  He works his work, I mine.

…

There lies the port, the vessel puffs her sail.

There gloom the dark broad seas.

My mariners, souls that have toiled and wrought, and thought with me; that ever with a frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine, and opposed free hearts, free foreheads…

You and I are old.

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.

Death closes all- but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks.  The long day wanes.  The slow moon climbs.  The deep moans round with many voices.

Come, my friends!  ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world, push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds!  To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down.  It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides, and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are-

One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses, Tennyson

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.