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Enterprise Security Magazine | Monday, August 17, 2020
The favorable conclusion in the patent infringement case represents an important symbolic victory for Genetec and a clear demonstration of its policy of never paying nuisance value settlements.
FREMONT, CA: Genetec, a leading technology provider of unified security, public safety, operations, and business intelligence solutions, announces that a patent infringement case initiated by a non-practicing entity (NPE) was withdrawn by the NPE at an early stage of the legal proceedings. As a result, the NPE paid an undisclosed amount to Genetec. In patent litigation in the US, it is highly unusual for a plaintiff to pay a defendant to resolve a case.
Genetec realizes that legal attacks from non-practicing entities are unfortunate instances of the technology business, illustrating a reported 90 percent of high-tech patent litigation cases in 2019 alone. The practice, known as patent trolling comprises groups that do not develop technology, but rather aggregate patents that are usually of no technological value to leverage as the basis to initiate IP infringement cases against enterprises.
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Widely disparaged by courts, scholars, and world leaders as a form of legal extortion, these pursuits are approximated to cost businesses tens of billions of dollars per year. Although the number of the patent trolling lawsuit has flattened since a landmark 2014 US Supreme Court decision, many groups continue to attempt to harness hoarded patents as a legal bullying tactic against companies that actively advance. While key players facing this sort of litigation are more often reported on, the majority of victims of patent trolling are smaller companies or startups.
Unlike the way several companies deal with these sorts of attacks, Genetec does not negotiate payment with patent trolls. Despite the potentially high cost of litigation, falling to their anti-innovation tactics will only encourage their behavior and, Genetec will always vigorously defend its technology and the hard work of the people who develop it. Though the company has quietly followed this course since the first patent troll, it felt that this occasion was a good time to speak out against this practice.
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