AOP looks to Indiegogo for patent troll solution

Patent research company Article One Partners (AOP) is to seek investment on crowdsourcing site Indiegogo to launch an anti patent troll initiative, WIPR can reveal.

Starting on December 10, AOP will ask for funds to kick-start Operation Ninja STAR and has until January 10, 2014 to raise $17,500.

With the money, AOP’s team of researchers would try to gather evidence that a patent held by suspected troll Treehouse Avatar Technologies is invalid.

For every $17,500 raised thereafter, AOP, which uses a crowdsourcing model itself, would be able to research another patent. The aim is to build a freely accessible database of information, which victims of patent licensing companies can tap into and potentially use to avoid litigation.

As well as receiving access to any materials related to a patent’s validity, victims can have a free consultation with AOP founder Cheryl Milone on how to use the evidence.

AOP has established a panel of specialists including members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to help determine the best patents to research.

Speaking to WIPR, AOP chief executive Marshall Phelps admitted it was a “bit of an experiment” but that the model would be based on AOP’s current setup.

“It’s the kind of stuff we do all the time for big clients, but these guys [SMEs] are not in a position to defend themselves. Bigger companies can look after themselves. Nobody cared about the troll problem until they moved down the food chain.

“The model works,” he added.

AOP wants to address what it sees as a gap in the market – a proactive way of fighting patent trolls, rather than tolerating them.

“The troll situation is a bit like the weather”, Phelps said. “Lots of people talk about it but don’t do anything.”

The advantage of AOP’s system, Phelps claimed, is that “our system is worldwide and not particularly language exclusive”.

“The language thing is huge but also you have a whole bunch of rather eclectic individuals looking at something,” he added.

“I don’t know that you need lots and lots of patents to make it effective. If you start making the model work ... it could be a self-fulfilling model.”

For Phelps, success would be “knocking out two or three of these patents that are being broadly asserted”.

The first patent to be researched protects an “apparatus and method that employs selectable and modifiable animation to collect data related to the choices made by the users of an information network.”

Beginning in July 2013, Phelps said, Treehouse Avatar Technologies sued a number of companies with the patent. Defendants include a number of small, indie game developers including Bad Pug Games.

“There was no particular reason” for choosing this patent, Phelps said, “but it seemed like a good example” of what AOP is trying to tackle.

Although he is uncertain about how popular the project will be, Phelps said it is not about making money, but about asking a wide range of people to fight a serious problem.

“This is to see if the crowd can help to modulate the troll problem.”