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Patent System Reform & Litigation Abuse

16 posts · Jun 2017 – Oct 2024

What this trail covers

Cloudflare actively combats patent litigation abuse by crowdsourcing prior art through initiatives like Project Jengo, aiming to invalidate overbroad patents and protect innovators. This has led to significant wins, including the voluntary cancellation of Sable Networks' '932 patent and encouraging other companies like Coinbase to adopt similar anti-troll strategies. The program continues to offer bounties for prior art submissions, fostering a community effort against patent trolls. The recent victory against Sable IP and Sable Networks, where Cloudflare successfully defended against claims related to Magic Transit and Argo for Packets by demonstrating non-infringement and patent invalidity, further solidifies this approach. The company's technical experts and engineers played a crucial role in explaining complex technical differences between old router hardware technologies and modern software-defined services to the jury. This success reinforces Cloudflare's commitment to fighting meritless patent claims and protecting innovation.

All Cloudflare trails
  1. Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public!This post details Cloudflare's successful legal defense and subsequent victory against patent troll Sable IP and Sable Networks. It highlights the technical arguments presented during the trial, specifically focusing on why Cloudflare's Magic Transit and Argo for Packets products do not infringe on Sable's patent claims. Key technical points include: 1. Cloudflare's products handle packets individually, not 'flows' or 'micro-flows' as required by the patent claim. 2. Cloudflare's servers do not have 'line cards,' a specific hardware component central to the patent's claims related to old router technology. The post also discusses the invalidity of Sable's patent claim, citing prior art references (Kodialam and Cheeseman patents) that rendered the claim obvious. Furthermore, it details Cloudflare's Project Jengo initiative, which incentivizes the public to find prior art to invalidate patent troll patents, and announces the conclusion of the Sable iteration of this project.
  2. Three new winners of Project Jengo, and more defeats for the patent trollThis post announces three new winners of Project Jengo, who submitted prior art that helped invalidate claims from Sable Networks' patents. Chris Wheeler submitted a 1998 USENIX paper on traffic management for Sable's '932 patent. Peter S. submitted Rena Whei-Ming Yang's 1997 MIT thesis on identifying nonadaptive network flows for Sable's '593 patent. David H. identified U.S. Patent No. 6,859,438, filed in 1998, as prior art for Sable's '431 patent. The post also provides case updates, noting that the US Patent Office agreed that most claims from Sable's '593 patent should not have been issued, and that the court found nine claims from the '431 patent invalid. This leaves only two patents and 14 claims at issue in the lawsuit.
  3. Former R&D Engineer Wins Round 2 of Project Jengo, and Cloudflare Wins at the Patent OfficeThis post details the success of Project Jengo in identifying prior art that led to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office instituting _inter partes_ review (IPR) for two Sable Networks patents ('593 and '932) on all claims. It also highlights Sable Networks voluntarily abandoning 34 out of 38 claims in two other patents ('919 and '431) in response to Cloudflare's IPR petitions. The post also announces Jean-Pierre Le Rouzic as the second round winner of Project Jengo, awarded $10,000 for prior art related to the '431 patent, and includes technical details of his findings comparing the '431 patent to US Patent No. 7,406,098.
  4. The First Three Winners from Cloudflare’s Project Jengo 2 Share $20,000This post announces the first three winners of Cloudflare's Project Jengo, a prior art search contest aimed at invalidating patents held by Sable Networks. It details the winning submissions: RFC 2702 (Matthew M.), Ascend/Cascade products and RFC 1953 (Pedro S.), and U.S. Patent No. 7,107,356 (Stephen F.). The post highlights the technical relevance of each submission in challenging Sable's patent claims related to networking and routing. It also reiterates the ongoing nature of the contest and the remaining prize money.
  5. Project Jengo Redux: Cloudflare’s Prior Art Search Bounty ReturnsThis post announces the relaunch of Project Jengo, a crowdsourced prior art search initiative, in response to a patent troll lawsuit filed by Sable Networks. It details the history of Cloudflare's fight against patent trolls, including the previous success with Project Jengo against Blackbird Technologies. The post outlines the specific patents asserted by Sable Networks and offers a $100,000 bounty for prior art submissions to invalidate these patents. It also provides background on Sable Networks and its predecessor, Caspian Networks, highlighting the outdated nature of the asserted patents and the company's business model as a patent troll.
  7. The Project Jengo Saga: How Cloudflare Stood up to a Patent Troll – and Won!This post details Cloudflare's successful defense against a patent troll (Blackbird Technologies) by winning a lawsuit on subject matter eligibility grounds and by crowdsourcing prior art to invalidate the troll's patents. It highlights the 'Project Jengo' initiative, which involved vigorous legal defense, funding prior art bounties, and encouraging bar association investigations. The post provides specific examples of prior art submissions that challenged the validity of Blackbird's patents, including references to online phone directories, illuminated product packaging, and modified bras. It also describes an ex parte reexamination victory against another Blackbird patent based on community-submitted prior art.
  8. Project Jengo Celebrates One Year Anniversary by Releasing Prior ArtThis post marks the one-year anniversary of Project Jengo, detailing its success in collecting and releasing approximately 200 pieces of prior art against 34 Blackbird patents. It highlights the legal victories against Blackbird's '335 Patent (dismissed on abstract idea grounds) and the ongoing ex parte reexamination of the '448 Patent, heavily influenced by community-submitted prior art. The post also announces the continued open call for prior art submissions and the distribution of bounties.
  9. Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent TrollThis post details Cloudflare's response to a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Blackbird Tech LLC. It outlines Cloudflare's legal strategy, which includes contesting the lawsuit vigorously, funding a crowdsourced search for prior art to invalidate Blackbird's patents, and investigating potential violations of professional conduct by Blackbird and its attorneys. The post also discusses the broader problem of patent trolling and its negative impact on innovation.
  10. Project Jengo Strikes Its First Targets (and Looks for More)This post details the first formal challenges and bounty awards from Project Jengo. It announces the challenge against U.S. Patent 7,797,448 ('GPS-internet Linkage') based on prior art submissions, and outlines the ongoing analysis of U.S. Patent 6,453,335 (the patent asserted against Cloudflare) using prior art submitted by participants. It also provides information on how to identify new patents to challenge and submit prior art, and updates on ethics complaints filed against Blackbird Tech.
  11. Project Jengo: Explaining Challenges to Patent Validity (and a looming threat)This post details Cloudflare's Project Jengo initiative to combat patent trolls by crowdsourcing prior art to invalidate patents. It explains the legal mechanisms of Inter Partes Review (IPR) and ex parte reexamination at the USPTO, contrasting them with federal court litigation. The post highlights the advantages of IPR and ex parte reexamination, including lower costs, faster timelines, and more favorable legal standards for patent challengers, and discusses their success rates in invalidating patent claims.