Summary: Geeks are protesting against IBM’s aggressive patent policy, which is merely an effort to remain relevant by taxing companies whose offerings were all along better

T ECHRIGHTS recently wrote about IBM's patent aggression and its progression to Groupon, which is the latest among many litigation or shakedown targets. This is what has happened to IBM in recent years; it’s a managerial malfunction — the decision to become a bully again (after a decade-long recess).

“IBM is a patent troll,” Benjamin Henrion wrote. “Boycott IBM,” he added. “Those IBM patents are so broad that they cover anything done on the web,” he noted, naming “5,796,967; 7,072,849; 5,961,601; and 7,631,346 https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5b21f31dbc833b0a886c5b53 …”

Christopher Yasiejko wrote about the latest development just before the weekend: (via Slashdot, which often criticises pertinent IBM patents)

A U.S. jury awarded International Business Machines Corp. $82.5 million after finding that Groupon Inc. infringed four of its e-commerce patents. Friday’s verdict is a boon to IBM’s intellectual-property licensing business, which last year brought in $1.19 billion for the company, holder of more than 45,000 patents. Groupon fell 7.8 percent to $4.84 in New York trading. IBM sued Groupon for $167 million, accusing it of building its online coupon business on the back of the IBM e-commerce inventions without permission. Midway through their first full day of deliberations in Wilmington, Delaware, jurors sided with IBM, finding that Groupon infringed the patents intentionally. The ruling means the judge can increase the damages award.

Over the years we’ve often taken a pro-IBM stance, but that totally changed a few years back when IBM became the leading lobbyist for software patents, a proponent of patent shakedown, and contributor to Watchtroll, which we’ll talk about in our next post. █

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