Sometimes, it seems as if licensing and patent holding companies are holding a secret contest between themselves to see who can pack in the most defendants into a patent lawsuit. Technology Patents LLC may be the new champion for suing 131 companies worldwide—the list goes on and on, naming companies like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, Telstra, AT&T, Cincinnati Bell, Motorola, Microsoft, Helio, Taiwan Mobile, O2, Rogers Wireless, China Resources Peoples Telephone Company, Yahoo, Sprint, and everyone in between. The company and its founder, Aris Mardirossian, are suing over what he believes to be infringement on two of his patents that address international text messaging.

The two patents in question are 6,646,542 and RE39,870—the second of which is merely a continuation of the first. They are both titled "Global paging system using packet-switched digital data network and remote country designation" and discuss a method that would allow text messages to be sent from country to country while using the Internet as part of the process. The system requires the sender to specify which country the message is going to first, then sends the message over a packet-switched digital data network (the 'Net) before being broadcast in the destination country in order to reach the recipient. The continuation patent was issued just last month by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

In the complaint, Mardirossian asserts jurisdiction over all 131 companies because they all, in some way or another, enable text messages to be sent or received within his company's home state of Maryland. He accuses the companies of knowingly infringing on the two patents, which make them money by importing, selling, offering for sale, making, or advertising systems that do the same things.

Indeed, many mobile phone companies and Internet-based technologies allow users to send text messages all over the world, which Mardirossian would say infringes on his patents. However, given the Supreme Court's new standards for obviousness in patents, this case may hit a few speed bumps. A technology licensing company named Friskit recently lost a patent infringement suit against Real Networks due to the SCOTUS decision, giving the ruling another leg to stand on.



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The USPTO has been trying to cut down on the use of continuation patents, too, but has run into a few roadblocks of its own. A federal judge stopped the USPTO late last month from limiting how continuation patents—those that mirror the original patent but with modifications—can be used, but the office is determined to soldier on. "The USPTO continues to believe that the rules are an important component of modernizing the patent system. They are part of a package of initiatives designed to improve the quality and efficiency of the patent process," a USPTO spokesperson told InformationWeek in October.

Needless to say, Mardirossian has demonstrated with this suit that he is no ordinary guy. Typically, a company genuinely interested licensing out technology to other companies would sue a few small companies at a time in order to build its portfolio, not the entire world at once. The Patent Troll Tracker blog has also pointed out a number of other legal antics by Mardirossian, including his filing of frivilous defamation lawsuits and having been fined for attempting to donate money to political campaigns under his children's names. He also attempted to get a permit to chop down a number of trees after his neighbor, Washington Redskins' owner Daniel Snyder, did so, but said that his reasoning was to protect his kids from hickory nuts.

Nuts or not (*cough*), Mardirossian believes that he deserves some relief from these 131 companies. Mardirossian and Technology Patents LLC ask for a permanent injunction against the infringing parties, and to have the US-based carriers shut down international SMS capabilities for good. The complaint also asks for unspecified monetary damages. With interest.