Washington State Has Sued a Patent Troll For Violating Consumer Protection Laws

Landmark Technology, a patent troll that has spent 20 years threatening and suing small businesses over bogus patents, and received EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month award in 2019, has been sued by the State of Washington.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a lawsuit claiming that Landmark Technology has violated the state’s Patent Troll Protection Act, which bans “bad faith” assertions of patent infringement. Following a widespread campaign of patent demand letters, more than 30 states passed some kind of law placing limits on bad-faith patent assertions.

These laws face an uphill battle to be enforced. First of all, the Constitution places important limits on the government’s ability to penalize the act of seeking legal redress. Second, the Federal Circuit has specifically held that a high bar of bad faith must be established for laws that would penalize patent assertion.

Washington’s case against Landmark could be a major test of state anti-troll laws, and whether state anti-trolling and consumer protection laws can dissuade some worst-of-the-worst patent troll behavior.

The lawsuit is filed against “Landmark Technology A,” a recently created LLC that appears to be largely identical to the now-defunct “Landmark Technology.” The new company asserts the same patent against the same type of targets. The patent’s inventor is Landmark Technology owner Lawrence Lockwood.

Over 1,000 Demand Letters

Landmark threatens and sues small businesses over U.S. Patent No. 7,010,508, which was issued to Lockwood in 2006 and claims rights to “automated multimedia data processing network for processing business and financial transactions between entities from remote sites.”

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