Patent Absurdity
Polaris IP, a firm which seems to exist solely to sue other companies for violating extremely broad and vague patents it has purchased, is now suing Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Borders, AOL and IAC for using a rules-based system to automatically process and respond to emails:
Polaris IP, Crouch observed, “appears to be part of a web of IP-related companies associated with attorney David Pridham.” These companies include Orion IP, Constellation IP, IP Navigation Group, Cushion Technologies, CT IP Holdings, Triton, Circinus IP, and Firepond.
Pridham did not respond to a request for comment.
The method and system detailed in the patent describes a way “for automatically interpreting an electronic message including the steps of (a) receiving an electronic message from a source; (b) interpreting the electronic message using a rule base and case base knowledge engine; and (c) retrieving one or more predetermined responses corresponding to the interpretation of the electronic message from a repository for automatic delivery to the source.”
As great as it would be to see these big companies crush this serial litigator, one or more out-of-court settlements are far more likely. And at least a few of the companies involved have been guilty of some questionable patents of their own (such as Amazon’s one-click ordering patent or Google’s WiFi advertising patents or AOL’s instant messaging patent).
