

Google's Motion to Dismiss patent infringement charges granted - DanielRibeiro
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101210205849673

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grellas
A little legal theory to give some context:

Lawsuits are formalized disputes by which those who have a fight with each
other are given an opportunity to determine whether an alleged wrong was
committed by one party against another and, if so, how it should be redressed.

The fight begins with formal notice about what your claims are, and these are
subject to specific rules known in federal court as "federal rules of civil
procedure" (counterparts exist in each state court as well).

Contrary to what most people think who have never been through a formal
litigation, one does not just file a simple piece of paper and then show up
before Judge Judy to testify as a witness and get an instant result. Rather,
in federal court, a case is begun by the filing of a complaint that gives
notice of the claims and then a formal process follows by which each party
sued is given a right to respond in a formal way, ultimately culminating in
the filing of an "answer" in which that party denies whatever allegations are
disputed and also asserts special defenses (known as "affirmative defenses")
that essentially say, "even if all that you say is true, I still win" (e.g.,
if the statute of limitations has run on what otherwise would be a valid
claim). In any case, once an answer is filed, the material allegations in the
complaint, coupled with the answer's denials of such allegations, then
constitute the "triable issues" in the case. The parties are free to conduct
(normally) extensive discovery concerning those issues, and that process can
run a year or more in a typical case and cost the parties a lot of expense for
things such as documents productions, interrogatory responses, deposition
testimony, and the like. In time (usually a minimum of 12 to 18 months from
the date of first filing), the case comes up for trial, at which time the
trier of fact (judge or jury) hears the factual evidence, determines what is
to be counted as creditable, and then applies the law to it to come to a
formal judgment. That judgment often is "x committed some wrong and caused
$xxx damages to y, and y is hereby awarded damages in the sum of $xxx" or it
could reflect some other remedy.

In any case, my point is that this is a long, complicated, and expensive
process. Therefore, the law imposes certain thresholds at inception that a
party must meet in order to be allowed to proceed with its case beyond the
filing stage. These traditionally are pretty easy thresholds to meet because
the policy behind the law is to permit all valid claims to come to trial and
not to subject them to early judge-ordered dismissals on technical grounds
(the ease of normally meeting these threshold requirements is what causes
institutional defendants to complain about how easy it is for them to be sued
and harassed even if the claims are dubious). But, though minimal, threshold
minimal pleading requirements do exist and, if a court determines that a
complaint does not meet them, it has the power to order that the complaint be
dismissed in whole or in part (that is, as to some but not all the claims).

The federal rules of civil procedure allow a pleader to assert any set of
facts that constitutes a proper claim for relief. If the facts set forth in a
complaint, on their face, do set forth such a claim, then the court has no
power to dismiss any such claim (even if those facts are ultimately be proved
to be untrue). Thus the procedural rules give a party that is sued the power
to bring what is known as a motion to dismiss in order to attack a complaint
on the technical grounds that is doesn't, on its face, set forth a proper
claim for relief and the court must then assess the complaint (on its face
only) to determine whether it does or does not in fact set forth "proper
claims."

In determining what is a "proper claim," the law defines each claim as having
essential elements and each of these must be properly pleaded in order to set
forth a good claim. Traditionally, the level of detail required to satisfy the
pleading requirements for each element of a claim is not too much. Therefore,
if each element is properly pleaded, the court will simply deny the motion and
this enables the complaining party to have a broad opportunity to engage in
discovery and ultimately seek to move the case to trial, all at great expense
to the parties sued.

These pleading rules went many years being so liberally construed in favor of
letting cases survive preliminary challenges and move toward trial that a
backlash eventually occurred, and this happened at the U.S. Supreme Court in
the form of a couple of leading cases that wound up giving trial judges much
greater ability to dismiss a case unless it set forth a lot more detail about
what allegedly occurred than had theretofore been required if that claim were
to be permitted to survive a motion to dismiss.

Now, with that long windup, here is what happened here: the Paul Allen entity
sued Google for patent infringement and Google moved to dismiss the complaint
on the grounds that it did not set forth proper claims for relief when tested
by the standards of the recent Supreme Court cases tightening up the pleading
requirements; the complainant said that it had set forth all the facts needed
to define proper claims and asked the court to deny Google's motion so that
the case might proceed through discovery and trial and argued, incidentally,
that the tighter standards required by the Supreme Court for federal cases
generally should not be applied to patent cases; the court agreed in all
respects with Google and dismissed the claims in their entirety on grounds
that they were too vaguely pleaded to set forth proper claims.

Since the rules in federal court are tilted to assure that all meritorious
claims ultimately have their day in court, such a dismissal is done "with
leave to amend," meaning that the plaintiff is given one or more opportunities
to fix any deficiencies before a court can dismiss such claims "with
prejudice" (meaning once and for all).

This was round one in the fight, and Google won it decisively. The rules are
stacked against any defendant in such cases but Google does seem to do a
brilliant job of exploiting the tools the law does afford defendants and, for
the moment anyway, does have this patent troll on the run.

~~~
ajtaylor
I can always count on learning more (and sometimes a lot!) about US law when I
read any of your posts. Thank you for taking the time to explain complicated
legal matters in layman's terms that I can understand.

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aristidb
Am I the only one who does not understand what this actually means? Could
somebody please provide a summary for the simple-minded / legally uneducated?

~~~
ergo98
Google was sued without any details of where and how they actually infringe on
the patents (which is often the case for blanket patent infringement claims --
sue everyone and see who settles). There is no double jeopardy or anything of
the like, so they can just get more detailed and refile.

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trobinson
Take that, patent trolls!

Sad to see Paul Allen associating his legacy with trolls and extortion
strategies for profit.

~~~
kljensen
Is it bad if the guy legitimately invented things, patented them, and they are
infringed?

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Osmose
Google can obviously afford to handle this kind of case, but what resources
are available for individuals or small businesses who can't afford going to
court with a patent troll?

~~~
kljensen
Few, but you won't be sued unless you are making serious money in the first
place.

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tkhoven
Might be useful to note (as per the article's title) that these are Paul
Allen's patent infringement charges, not Oracle's.

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thepumpkin1979
I missed it... :(

Forbidden You don't have permission to access /article.php on this server.
Apache/2 Server at www.groklaw.net Port 80

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hasenj
Does this mean Google won the suit?

~~~
kljensen
No, Allen can file an amended complaint that satisfies the court.

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TotlolRon
_"A wise old owl sat in a Valley,

The more he saw, the less he believed,

The less he believed, the more he saw,

We never ask: what is the last straw?"_

\-- @taylorbuley in TC comments regarding something else, 2010

