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The judges conferences are typically about setting trial rules and tuning the trial logistics - including simplifying by combining cases and as many charges and arguments as possible. Otherwise, with this many defendants and the dissimilar parts of their accused violations how could a judge and especially a jury keep it unscrambled by the time they have to make judgements.
The disadvantage for VPLM is that defendants legal work can be divided and shared as a combined resource. The advantage is that only one can speak at a time and if they get redundant, the judge can limit them.
Typical factless anti VPLM stupidity - check the spelling of the VPLM attorney's name - Not Emil but
Here it is (sort of => factually misrepresented): Check out post 72470.
The case to bill and actually start collecting royalties will only have muscle after winning the suit or being bought out. Selling the techs isn't really involved here as the other beneficiaries use them under the false assumption that it is public domain.
MISREPRESENTATIONS BY ANTI-VPLM POSTS
I THINK YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE POSTED THE COURT TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT BECAUSE YOU KNEW YOU WERE MAKING A FALSE POST.
Here is the relevant and ONLY CANCER RELATED PART of the transcript from the Nov. 14 judges conference with all the attorneys --- and the correct context was that judge was speaking against endless time consuming continuations ----- not the VPLM law suit!. Her goal was just to minimize the trial's complications and delays.
Please paste the transcript paragraph or a link to it so we can all read it.
Also, if the judge really said that, why wasn't the case dismissed?
The real cancer in this business is the way big companies tread on small inventors IP rights and get away with it because of their financial power.
"Courts see it as a cancer" - Where are you coming from ????
See what as a cancer, the patent suit? What documents are you referring to? Did the courts say they don't want to hear the case?
Trial strategy - Usually discovery is collected and presented according to a schedule created in conference hearings between the judge and attorneys. Longer delivery of discovery sometimes means more collection of facts and greater refinement of accusations. It also offers time for the opposing lawyers to talk to each other in greater earnest (courtroom steps negotiations).
Did the judge previously demand discovery delivery for that hearing? Or was this just a comment of need.
And you keep forgetting that proof is one of the results of court findings => and VPLM has a powerful legal team that isn't stupid enough to go to court without well documented examples of infringement. These are very accomplished lawyers with extensive experience in large difficult cases - definitely not amateurs (See my previous post).
I suspect the defendants attorneys are worried considering who they are up against. Why do you think they fought so hard and, at some risk, planted the now disgraced judges at PTAB.
Possibly, the defendants will try to financially outlive the judgement that could be against them with appeals. But we'll have to wait and see. If they are smart they will just buy out the plaintiffs.
Check the facts.
I LOOKED UP THE LAWYERS from documents posted on VPLM website - John Carson and Kerry Taylor. WOW, these are full partners in a very large IP law firm with very impressive records.
I wish I could have afforded them for my IP work.
Definitely NOT junior level people being trained in the practice of law as claimed by VPLM antagonist in earlier post.
When large companies by either intent or innocence, use an intellectual property freely, they make a justification of public domain, common knowledge or invented here arguments.
Smaller companies fall in line under the belief that if Apple does it, it must be free.
When companies get a bill from the rightful owner of that IP, executive conclusions are generally made that payment isn't necessary because everyone uses it as public domain or pre-existing general knowledge - same as Apple (who nobody can beat, right?). UNTIL A COURT BREAKS THE PUBLIC DOMAIN TREND there will not be any sales. There also won't be much in the way of takeover activity.
That is really what the past PTAB hearings and this trial are about. PTAB RULINGS ARE VERY POTENT IN COURT HEARINGS. Unless the US District court invalidates their own government's experts, the trial quickly becomes about enforcement and damages.
It seems to me that folks who have no vested interest in VPLM make a lot of noise about the Greedy, if not fraudulent nature of the CEO, and trash the potential value of intellectual property which has been judged as not trivial, and in fact as valid by people who are experts that normally work against most inventors in USPTO challenges.
Who says, the gift recipients dump their shares and where's the evidence?
And by what evidence is the claim being made that the court is just looking for a way to kill the case? Simplify, of course, all courts do it. But with the magnitude of this case PLUS all the visibility this thread has helped create, no judge is going to do anything rash on this one.
Perhaps negative ASSumptions are in abundance here, but please cut the crap and try to be more effective in making the case against VPLM. Judging by the recent stock prices, you are losing cred. I am really looking for another $0.035 opportunity. I missed the last one!!!
AND THEN SOME!!!!
Check out my previous posts.
Many thanks to Plow for making available the transcript of the Nov 14 judge's conference.
A lot may have happened since then but to be clear Twitters charges of violating 2 patents have at VPLM's request been reduced to violating 1 patent. They are definately not off the hook.
Regarding the dismissal talk earlier in this thread, most trials involve (failed) motions to dismiss. In this case with multiple defendants, each with various charges, the judge has required them to combine the dismissal motion so she doesn't have to spend a month hearing and ruling on 100 motion segments. This doesn't in any way imply probability.
This is a really complex case for the judge to deal with especially as multiple defendants are charged with both multiple overlapping and multiple seperate infringements.
Also Kevin Malek is litigating for VPLM. ?Lawyer Related to Emil? Is he the one getting the so called gifts as legal fees? If so, he has skin in the game which would make me feel good.
At some percentage of ownership, stockholders become considered as insiders by the SEC. If the gifts are that large and frequent, and if dumping by those shareholders is going on, where are the declarations?
Prove the gift recipients are dumping, and file a complaint with the SEC if you can make an effective fraud argument. Even if you spend $0.07 for 1 share only, they will act on your complaint ..... but only if it is valid.
So far as DB just pointed out there is no evidence of dumping, although I do have questions about accumulating.
PRETTY OBVIOUS DOESN'T PROTECT ONE FROM SLANDER ACTIONS AND I BELIEVE WON'T CONVICT AN EXECUTIVE OF SECURITIES FRAUD IN THE LEGAL SYSTEM.
Is this perhaps a violation of securities law that you could file an SEC complaint about?
Really? Can you please point the thread readers to the required insider sales notice.
Did you see an insider sale declaration?
I can't speak to the ethics being challenged here, but I do have some expertise in IP Legal matters and most of the negative assumptions about the courts, the lack of validity of the IP and its lack of value are baseless.
It is important to note that there was NO PRIOR ART to the Digifonica/VPLM patent applications. This means that anything they or anyone else did since, even if more advanced, is likely based on their technology. They own the basis of VOIP for 20 years and with a successful outcome can start commanding royalties.
refer to report
The above report also nicely summarizes what technology each patent covers. They are huge and regardless of his faults, the reason Malek got into this in the first place.
It would be more helpful to actually know something about patent and legal issues and proceedings than to make ASSumptions or jump to conclusions.
There is lots of technology covered by the patents. 1 claim means only 1 aspect of all the claims against that defendant.
Unless they have payment contracts that date back to the early days of the company,I suspect those insiders and contractors who collect shares for payment are actually paid at current market value when the shares are dispersed. That is the way it worked for me when I received options as employee awards. Could the sub penny values you see reported on SEC forms actually be book values declared when the stock was issued.
It isn't just founding members that get paid with stock. Employees and contractors likely all do. But, founding members may have the oldest contracts. If they actually collect shares for a fraction of current values there are significant tax liabilities.
Do you really believe lawyers and insiders who get paid with stock shares invest their time and effort for worthless paper.
Consider the massive amounts of work for which others getting paid with stock such as engineers investing to expand the patent portfolios, lawyers investing to prosecute and police them, and executives investing to monetize them.
Nobody in their right minds does this with even a moderate risk of worthlessness. People are just not that stupid.
Great negative comments, please continue. I would love to see the the share price driven down to $0.03 so I can get in really big before settlement or merger offers start coming in. Recently when the stock hit $0.045 I doubled my position. Like a shark with blood in the water, I'm hungry for a lot more at that price, especially now that we are finally at the courthouse steps.
My career has also taught me how low companies can go when big money is involved to drive down the value of a company before a takeover, from hiring bloggers to plant distrust, to implanting executives that deliberately destroy real value.
I worked in a semiconductor tech company with lots of IP that over 2 years was driven from $60/sh to $0.90/sh before being taken over by Novellus, another large company where big money was involved.
Always try to get the facts, and question everything including who is planting seeds of distrust.
My career has made me cynical of the whole IP legal system.
Infringing Companies want to create a consensus of patent worthlessness.
Nobody in the companies questioned really believes these patents are a joke, especially after their costly PTAB trial loss. They just use the $y$tem to avoid, or stall paying as long as possible -> betting they can win, or financially outlive the suit.
Keep in mind, they tried to play a crooked game with the PTAB and their players, 2 PTAB judges who and got caught before the ruling. If the patents were really worthless, they wouldn't have needed to plant judges.
Go back and read my posts on patents, infringement and how the IP policing business really works. Patents are difficult to get and very costly; and the legal system makes it especially difficult for inventors to police when a lot of money is at stake.
It is human nature to assume a technology is public domain when lots of technology users employ it. Sometimes multiple people come up with the same idea or learn about the idea accidentally in conversations and use it as their own. IP belongs to the first to document and apply the idea for patent. Infringers don't always realize they are trespassing on someones intellectual property until they get a bill, which is what happened with Voip-Pal and its defendants.
What I mean by my earlier post regarding IP being used for free applies both to inadvertent use and deliberate use. Once a company is using a property for free (squatting) the inventor's difficulty and expense of policing that property is great, and the squatters take advantage of that often making profits that greatly exceed eventual civil awards - thus the 15 year example of the Sears Craftsman Pop Wrench which became a mainstay of the mechanical tool business worldwide. (Chances are if you have socket wrench set, you are familiar with the push button socket release).
Just curious. You stated
[color=red]"This is a complete falsehood and meant to confuse potential investors. VPLM depends on people not understanding court process and IP infringement."[/color]
Do you have a basis for this claim or a background in patents and infringement and related court processes?
Patent Infringement is dated not from the date of the patent but from the first recorded date of the invention which can be years before publication of the patent grant. My first patent took 4 years to process after conceptualization 1 year earlier. (my granted patents)
It is expensive, slow and very difficult to get a patent as the examiners job is to try to invalidate all the claims, including for causes such as obviousness, common usage, common knowledge, and priority of time. After a costly patent challenge, and if PTAB finally rules for an inventor, its a REALLY BIG DEAL because they often don't.
Even for big company inventors it is difficult, and the system encourages corporate infringements because cheating is often more cost effective than up front deals with IP owners (Previous posted example of SEARS post# 68863).
VPLM went through major proofs of invention with USPTO just to get the patents granted in the first place, and even more with the PTAB hearing officers whose motivation to invalidate exceeds that of the examiners.
If patents got this far through the process, you'd better believe these IPs have merit. Courts typically accept PTAB (the experts) rulings of validity. The following civil trial is then not about validity but whether the inventions were used without authorization, the tactics used to deprive the inventor, and in the case of a finding for infringement, the values of damages and punishment.
If VPLM wins, they don't just collect damages and penalties, they then have a market as potential customers will be forced to realize they have to pay to employ the technology or come up with something altogether different.
Were they around back then or did they buy the patents from the original inventors who may not have been financially able to police the infringements.
Why would any large company buy what they think they can get for free? With massive legal funds, GIANTS can tie up inventors in court for decades while destroying them financially. Meanwhile they reap in profits from the IP. Few inventors and small companies can stand up to these Giants.
Case in point SEARS ~1985 lost an IP suit to the inventor of the Craftsman branded PopWrench socket release mechanism - nowdays found on most socket wrench handles.. It took 15 years and a kind deep pocketed contingency lawyer to get paid on that one, and after the hundreds of millions of wrenches sold, the inventor only collected $15M - Worked out good for SEARS.
Sometimes company engineers utilize technologies honestly believing they are free and clear and after its too late, discover they are infringing things proprietary and invented by someone else.
Consider This
Litigation Lawyers are usually intelligent people.
Isn't it stock that pays them?
Do you really think they would generate so much work for so long to pursue a hopeless case?
It seems to me, as a professional inventor, engineer and patent mentor myself, that they are heavily invested in a successful outcome. A dismissal or even a hard fought loss would be very expensive for them.
Stockholder success also means HUGE success for them as well as the principals.