The Prior Art

Patent Litigation Weekly: Inventor from ESN v. Cisco and Troll Tracker Lawsuits Arrested on Weapons Charges

The inventor who holds the patent that was at the heart of two libel lawsuits against "Patent Troll Tracker" blogger Rick Frenkel and Cisco Systems was arrested last week, after police found an illegal stockpile of firearms, ammunition, and grenades in his home in Manchester, Massachusetts, about 30 miles from Boston. Gregory Girard, named inventor on U.S. Patent No. 7,283,519, believed he was readying himself for "Armageddon," according to police. In addition to having around 20 firearms, Girard was stockpiling food and medicine, camouflage, and body armor, and had built an indoor shooting range in the attic of his condominium, according to accounts of the arrest in the Gloucester Daily Times and the Boston Globe. Girard had a license for the guns, but his explosives, double-edged knives, and habit of shooting indoors are all illegal.

Last Wednesday, a Massachusetts superior court judge deemed Girard too dangerous to be released and ordered him held until his probable cause hearing on March 15. According to police reports, Girard recently told his wife: "It's fine to shoot people in the head because traitors deserve it," and "Don't talk to people, shoot them instead." (His wife reported concerns about his increasingly paranoid behavior to authorities the day before he was arrested.) For Girard, those "traitors" may have included most members of Congress; news blog TPM Muckraker notes that Girard has been an active poster in far-right Internet forums for the past month.

In 2007, Girard's patent was the basis of an infringement suit that his holding company, ESN, filed against Cisco Systems. For ESN, it was a hugely important suit; one of ESN's lawyers later testified that his client was seeking "potentially hundreds of millions of dollars" from an East Texas patent win against Cisco.

Troll Tracker update: Frenkel told the truth, says Cisco

On Friday, Cisco Systems unsealed its motion for summary judgment in the Albritton v. Cisco Systems defamation lawsuit, one of two libel lawsuits suits filed against ex-Troll Tracker blogger Rick Frenkel and his then-employer, Cisco.

There's a lot of information here, but the takeaway point is this: Cisco says Frenkel's articles were accurate. And in the United States, of course, you're allowed to publish true information, even if it hurts someone. What Albritton said was defamatory was either true (the docket was altered), or fell into the categories of opinion and rhetoric (words like "conspiracy") or just wasn't about him, says Cisco's lawyer, Charles Babcock of Jackson Walker.

Cisco also argues that Albritton's reputation wasn't injured at all by Frenkel's two articles, which involve a changed filing date in the ESN v. Cisco Systems lawsuit. As for co-defendants John Noh and Mallun Yen, the company  says they had no role writing, reviewing, editing, or publishing Frenkel's articles.