Why it Pays to be a Professional Badass

After a patent troll realized that they had sued Newegg, a company that is known for going to the mat against patent trolls, they dropped their case like it was plutonium:

A shell company that sued dozens of computer peripheral makers has quickly dropped Newegg house brand Rosewill from its list of defendants. The motion to dismiss, filed yesterday, comes just days after Newegg's lawyers filed notices of their appearance in the case.

Minero Digital LLC dismissed its case against Rosewill one day after Newegg Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng authorized his outside lawyer to try to settle the case in exchange for a "nominal donation to charity." During that conversation (the attorneys' first discussion about the case), Newegg's outside counsel said that although the proposed agreement wouldn't pay Minero anything, it was likely to be Newegg's best and final offer. He suggested Minero search the Internet for news articles about Newegg's policies on settling "patent troll" type cases. (The short version: Newegg doesn't pay patent trolls.)

The next day, Minero dismissed the lawsuit against Rosewill. The dismissal is without prejudice, which means it could be re-filed in the future.

It appears that Newegg Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng is kind of bummed, because no one wants to dance with him any more, "I never get invited to parties anymore. Now I keep getting kicked out."

BTW, while there are a concerns about how one reigns in patent trolls while continuing to incentivize creativity, adding transparency to the process, to prevent obscure shell companies from obscuring who owns, and who benefits from, their behavior.

I think that naming and shaming the likes Nathan Myhrvold, who tries to pretend that he's a scientist and philanthropist, and not an extortionist, would make the world a better place.