Anti-Troll LOT Network Expands to 500 members

The Anti-Troll (or Troll protection) LOT Network has expanded to 500 members.  I first wrote about the Google started LOT Network in 2015, and I believe it had about 47 members then.  Around four years later and we are at a significant increase.  For more on the LOT Network, please see these two prior posts, here and here.  Also, here is a blurb from a release by the LOT Network: 

"When you’re caught up in the day-to-day business of moving things forward, it’s easy to lose sight of accomplishments. It was in this way that a significant milestone — LOT Network’s membership reaching 500 members — caught us nearly by surprise. We are very proud of our community, which now counts Disney, Meituan Dianping, Centerpoint Energy, Synchrony, Yamaha,  VISA, Juniper Networks, 7-Eleven and Netgear as some of its newest members.

Our growth now spans industries — including automotive, finance, entertainment, cloud computing, retail, manufacturing, and emerging industries like blockchain — as well as continents. You can find LOT members in more than 35 different countries and counting; some of the biggest tech companies in Asia are among our strongest supporters.

Further, we’ve seen an uptick in startup membership, confirming that LOT is a solution for all companies regardless of their size or industry. Our momentum toward becoming a standard business practice grows stronger every day — more and more, we see members joining us based on information they’ve found online — often joining without contact from a LOT Network team member.  And that is because of you — the collective reputation of our membership makes joining LOT an easy decision."

Chemical Company Joins the LOT Network Against Trolls

Covestro, a chemical company which uses digital technologies to build better products, has joined the LOT Network.  As previously discussed, the LOT Network was started to thwart patent trolls.  Essentially, each member agrees to provide a license to the other members of the network if their patent is transferred to a patent troll.  Covestro’s press release states:

“With the convergence of the chemical industry and digital technologies, our sector has increased exposure to PAE litigation,” said Gilbert Voortmans, Vice President, Head of Intellectual Property Rights at Covestro. “Innovation is core to our business, and we feel it’s important to take a stance against anything that could interfere with the fair use of intellectual property.”

Interestingly, this is the first chemical company to join the LOT Network, according to the press release.  We’ll have to see whether other companies in industries generally thought not to be subject to troll suits will join the network, particularly as digital technologies influence almost all industries.  Moreover, I count around 170 members listed on the LOT Network website, including companies ranging from Alibaba to Crate and Barrel to Wells Fargo to Uber to Target to Honda. I wonder if universities should create something like the LOT Network to protect themselves from future suits by university based patents.  

Google's License on Transfer Network: A Good Way to Avoid Patent Trolls?

Google, along with a number of other companies, started the License On Transfer (LOT) Network on July 9, 2014.  The general purpose of the program is to reduce the risk of being sued by a Patent Assertion Entity (PAE) for network participants.  The danger present for all market participants is that an operating company with patent assets may fall on hard times and have to sell their patents to a PAE or may just choose to do so.  The LOT Network protects its members from suit from patents acquired by PAEs from their members.  Essentially, all parties agree that if one of the patents potentially subject to the license (the network members' patent portfolios) is transferred to a PAE then the license is effective as to that patent.  This means that the members of the LOT Network are basically immune from an infringement suit under that patent from the PAE once the transfer to a PAE occurs.  The agreement is carefully drafted to exclude “triggering events” from including transfers to non-PAE’s. The agreement can be found, here.  According to a presentation concerning the program, the members of the group have been insulated from at least one transfer of a subject patent to a Japanese PAE. 

There are currently 325,000 patent assets, including 99,000 US patents subject to the LOT Network.  The current membership of 47 companies includes: 3D Robotics, Inc., AddShoppers, Inc., Asana, Be Labs, Binatone Electronics, Breezy Print, CAN Telematics, Canon, Cinfo Contenidos Informativos Personalizados SL, Civis Analytics, Cloudability, Corvado, Cyclica, Dropbox, Edyt, Emaldo Techonolgies, Enplug, EPHE Corp., Ford Motor Company, GitHub, Google, Great Wave Tech, HLCA Media, Indri, Inductive Automation, JPMorgan Chase Bank, Kairos AR Inc., Khan Academy, Marine Traffic, Mazda Motor Corp., Naehas, Newegg, Pandora Media, Pure Storage, Red Hat, Ring Partner, Rocket Matter, SAASPASS, Sabai Technology, SAP SE, SAS Institute, SilverEdge, Sipree, SolarCity, Theralytics, Uber Technologies, and the Wikipedia Foundation.  This appears to be a particularly attractive option for companies without a lot of patents that may be sued by PAEs.  To join, you only need to pay a reasonable fee based on your companies’ annual revenue.  I suppose one downside is that the value of your patent may be less given that a potential PAE buyer will have fewer entities to sue.  Are there any other downsides?