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Patent troll lawyers now going after users of most modern technologies
 When Steven Vicinanza got a letter from an entity called Project Paperless LLC in the mail earlier this year informing him that he needed to pay $1,000 per employee for a license to some "distributed computer architecture" patents, he didn't quite believe it at first. The letter seemed to be saying anyone using a modern office scanner to scan documents to e-mail would have to pay--which is to say, just about any business, period.If he'd paid up, the IT services provider that Vicinanza founded, BlueWave Computing, would have owed $130,000. The letters, he soon found out, were indeed real and quite serious--he wasn't the only person getting them. Vicinanza soon got in touch with the attorney representing Project Paperless: Steven Hill, a partner at Hill, Kertscher & Wharton, an Atlanta law firm. "[Hill] was very cordial and very nice," he told Ars. "He said, if you hook up a scanner and e-mail a PDF document--we have a patent that covers that as a process." It didn't seem credible that Hill was demanding money for just using basic office equipment exactly the way it was intended to be used. So Vicinanza clarified: "So you're claiming anyone on a network with a scanner owes you a license?" asked Vicinanza. "He said, 'Yes, that's correct.' And at that point, I just lost it." Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2013-01-05 |
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