Genetec wins ‘rare’ cash settlement from NPE
Canadian security company Genetec is claiming a “rare” victory in a patent lawsuit with a non-practising entity (NPE), which it said paid a fee to resolve the case.
The Montréal based firm, which develops video surveillance products, said the NPE withdrew the case at an “early stage in proceedings” after agreeing to settle.
Genetec didn’t name the NPE in question. The company said it wanted to “take occasion of the litigant’s settlement payment to make public its firm stance against nuisance lawsuits from NPEs”.
Genetec placed the lawsuit in the context of so-called “patent troll” litigation, where NPEs acquire patents for the purpose of filing infringement suits and collecting settlement fees.
“We don’t negotiate payment with patent trolls,” said Genetec President Pierre Racz.
“Despite the potentially high cost of litigation, bending to their anti-innovation tactics only encourages their behavior and, as a matter of principle, Genetec will always vigorously defend its technology and the hard work of the people who create it,” Racz added.
Some patent owners have criticised the narrative around patent trolls, arguing that the term is applied too loosely.
IP Europe, a business coalition of standard-essential patent owners including Nokia and Ericsson, earlier this year urged the EU to beware the “ patent troll myth”.
Writing in The Financial Times in January, IP Europe executive secretary Francisco Mingorance said that the narrative of abusive litigation by ‘patent trolls’ was a “calculated attempt to create a false rationale for weakening the patent protections of technology innovators in Europe”.
But defendants such as Genetec say the problem is real, citing data which claims NPEs represent 90% of ‘high-tech’ patent litigation in the US.
That figure came from Unified Patents, an organisation formed to tackle NPEs and invalidate patents used in such litigation.
Jean-Yves Pikulik, Genetec’s director of IP, called the latest settlement “an important symbolic victory for Genetec, and a clear demonstration of our policy of never paying nuisance value settlements”.
"While we would much rather spend our time patenting our innovations than fighting off patent trolls, we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves against NPEs and seek legal costs in lawsuits that we perceive as frivolous,” Pikulik continued.
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