Drew Curtis, CEO of Fark.com was sued for infringing on a patent that claimed to cover sending press releases out via email.  He made a short five minute video describing how he beat them.  You can find here: http://on.ted.com/Bxwq

Here is a quote: “Don’t negotiate with terrorists… patent trolls have done more damage to the United States economy than any domestic or foreign terrorist organization in history, EVERY YEAR.”

If you are being threatened by Project Paperless LLC and the law firm of Hill, Kertcher, & Wharton – don’t settle for tens of thousands of dollars.  Join the fight for your right to use the copier or scanner you bought with your hard earned money.  Check out this complete site for details on this case of patent trolling and learning your options.

Project Paperless, LLC claims if you use a network scanner you’re  infringing on their patents.  But are these patents valid?  We don’t believe they have ever been subject to re-examination or court tested.

For a patent to be valid it must be both novel and non-obvious.  Novelty means the invention must not be in use (in the US), or described in any publication anywhere.  The term prior art means any publicly available information describing the invention in such things as prior patents, books, articles, technical journals that existed prior to the patent.  If prior art is found after an invention has been patented, the Patent Office can invalidate the patent.

According to US Patent #5,764,866, filed three years prior to Project Paperless LLC’s earliest patent, Yoshio Maniwa describes  “A device for scanning an image to create image data to be transmitted to a network to which the device is connected. The scanning device includes an operation panel for selecting each of settings of scan conditions, a scan unit for scanning at least one image to create image data according to the settings of scan conditions, a memory unit for storing the image data, and a network-interface unit for sending the image data stored in the memory unit to the network.”  SOUNDS LIKE A NETWORK SCANNER TO US!

Read more about novelty, non-obviousness, and prior art here.

As Colleen Chien said in her article (previous post), the best way to stop the trolls is for defendants and potential targets to pool resources.  Here’s another article with the same advice:  “Taming the Patent Trolls“  If you have received a demand letter or are concerned about using your networked scanner or copier,  Contact us today for more information on how companies are working together to STOP PROJECT PAPERLESS LLC.

We came across this excellent article on how to Turn the Tables on Patent Trolls.   We spoke with the author, Colleen Chien who is a law school professor and really knows her stuff!  Her article suggests that companies work together to fight this injustice.  She says: “The gains from collaboration can be substantial…”  Contact us to join the coalition!

Welcome to Stop Project Paperless.  Our new blog is here to help companies that are being sued or threatened by Project Paperless LLC and the law firm of Hill, Kertscher, and Wharton for using a network scanner/printer/copier.  Sounds crazy but it is 100% true.  Read on for details.  We will update this site several times a week so check back for the latest.  Also, feel free to contribute.  This is an open conversation.