I do a lot of my own research and can search all patent databases, also international ones on my own and then dig out court verdicts relevant to my case. But you are lost in court without a pro. My opponent is paying one of the most expensive patent lawyers in all of Germany, a professor who sits in European boards that write our patent law. It is not a question of who is smarter, but simply who has more experience and knows all the little tricks.
And all that for a so called "trivial patent".
With my company we countersued to break the patent, because there are enough older patents and we did win in many points. unfortunately the courts left him one littel detail and we would have to go to a higher court to get rid of that.
But because the patent itself, even limited to one single detail, was still valid and he immediately forbid us to use it, I had to close down a small business with 6 jobs. The patent was nearly 20 years old and would have ended anyway 4 months later.
My suppliers got worried that we might be liable to crazy damages and we had to close. They wanted me to restart the business after the patent ran out, but that would have put me under suspicion for fraud.
Luckily that was my best ever month on istock with over 7000 dollars. I then decided to disentangle myself from the rest of my fathers business and the people there kept their jobs, that business is still around now.
Thanks to istock I was able to survive.
He then immediately sued me personally...because as a managing director your are fully personally liable in the case of patent or license law...even if you have a limited liability business. A neat little detail of German law...
4 years later I won the case by 97%, I had to pay a little money, but the courts imposed 100% of all legal costs on him, including my 3% share. They were furious he had insisted the business has to close. Especially because he wasnt using the patent himself and didnt have an active business and wasnt licensing his "invention" elsewhere. The whole thing wasnt his idea to begin with...but that is a different story.
He even insinuated my photography business was a fraud, i was still secretly selling the other product etc...but I could easily disprove that, but was forced to disclose my istock income to the courts.
Then he argued, I closed the business to get rid of my other one, that it was failing...again i had to prove it wasnt, we had enough orders.
But by then the judges had understood what kind of game he was playing, and that they were being used in a personal vendetta between two former friends.
So in the end, i got most of my money back, but I did lose quite a bit of money from closing the business. I mean under normal circumstances it could have been sold, not for a large sum, but at least something.
The worst part is the waste of my time and energy, the stress for the whole team.
At the moment it is fairly quiet, every three months I get documents from the case running parallel and have to review it for mistakes, but as much as he keeps dreaming of suing me again, i dont see how.
Unfortunately I cannot really close the chapter and forget about it, i have to keep following it, because these lawyers are not like mine and they keep making the most stupid mistakes.
I got a huge dose of life experience...yes...and it did make me seruosly consider moving into stock and the arts fulltime...but this is an experience you dont really need.
Court cases are a very common tool in business warfare. It is used professionally by many companies, either to squeeze out smaller competitors or force them to sell.
Judges do have leeway in how they interpret things, they could have fined me much higher if they wanted to. But because I could prove I had always sought professional counsel and everything i ever claimed was true, they cut my liability to three years instead of 10 and also reduced the overall sum and got me all my legal costs back.
They are still stuck with him, the current judge is the wife of one of the patent lawyers i worked with over the years. But they are used to these people that love to live their life in court.
I really do appreciate my life in stock and I am grateful that all the agencies I work with always pay me on time. I know how hard it is to run a business.
Whatever dramas we have here, it is overall a very friendly industry filled with intelligent and kind hearted people.
Thank you for listening to my story
Document everything, keep all your papers or at least screenshots you can print.
The more material you have, the easier it will be for your lawyer to help you.
Legal logic is a world of its own, it took me a long time to understand how they think.
PS: thank you old istock and team. You guys really saved me when i needed it.
PS2: my case was apparently discussed at an international patent meeting and is helping to change laws in Germany on how to deal with patent trolls and trivial patents.
We apparently made history, nobody had ruled in such detail how to evaluate the value of a trivial patent on a tiny detail of a large machine.
Or maybe my patent lawyer just told me that to cheer me up..
...but it is true that I couldnt find anything similar in German, English or French international data bases.
PS3: Actually we couldnt break the patent completly because the letter "s" was missing in a patent from 1890. They used the same solution, but only had a side view in the drawing of what they did, not one from the front. And because the drawing only showed one side, the accessory was described in singular not plural. But the machine has two sides and needs two add ons, otherwise it doesnt work as described. Nevertheless, the professor argued that adding a piece to every side, was his clients "invention" and the judges allowed him to keep that detail and urged him to accept a sensible solution with a small fee.
But that is why he had to close us down. he realized there was a risk the higher court might not uphold that and without the patent his fun would be over.
So 90 years after the first description, 6 people lost their job, because it was a side view drawing and one letter "s" was missing....
Never underestimate the letter s!
September 30, 2012, 08:08
