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Prenda Law was a "copyright trolling" scheme that sued thousands for downloading online porn, but the organization was buried under a wave of judicial sanctions beginning in 2013.

However, the three lawyers found to be intertwined with the organization—John Steele, Paul Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy—continue to get in hot water. On Friday, an Illinois federal judge reconsidered (PDF) a 2014 ruling in which he found there wasn't enough evidence for a "contempt of court" finding. New evidence has convinced US District Judge David Herndon that Steele and Hansmeier should be found in contempt, and last week he ordered them to pay $65,263. That amount will get progressively larger, the judge warned, "if they continue their misdeeds before this Court."

In addition, Steele and Duffy "engaged in unreasonable, willful obstruction of discovery in bad faith," and Herndon ordered those two to pay for the defense's discovery expenses, needed to unwind the complex financial records.

The three offending lawyers have until July 15 to pay up.



http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015 ... id-assets/

Many posts over there..

Seems like a clever scam, until discovered..

Law firm created several "Shell" corporations, purchased porn film, posted it on internet for downloading, then threatened to sue those that did download it.



Judge really pissed off..

Maybe the judge dl'd the film and they tried to sue him!

New patent statistics show that patent litigation, driven by so-called "patent trolls," could reach an all-time high in 2015. It's a statistic that's sure to be highlighted by tech lobbyists and others pushing for patent reform, given that the House is likely to take up a floor vote of the Innovation Act this month.

The stats are published by United Patents, which helps companies deal with patent trolls. The stats show that 3,050 patent lawsuits were filed in the first half of the year. Of those, 2,075, or 68 percent, were filed by patent trolls, which United Patents refers to as "non-practicing entities" or NPEs.

The total number of lawsuits is up 11 percent compared to the first half of 2014 and up 35 percent from the second half of last year (see above graph). United Patents projects that will lead to an all-time high in 2015, with an estimated 6,100 lawsuits and another 1,900 projected disputes at the Patent and Trademark Appeal Board. The latter are mostly proceedings called "inter partes reviews" that challenge the validity of patents.

Patent trolls' responsibility for 68 percent of the lawsuits is up slightly from a few years ago, when they constituted 62 percent of all patent cases.

Focusing on the high-tech sector, however, the trolls' prevalence is stunning. A full 90 percent of tech patent cases are filed by patent trolls. That's compared to 85 percent in the same period last year and 82.5 percent in the second half of 2014.