At long last, Ricoh and Xerox hit back at scanner trolls

Mystery company's $1,000-per-worker demands are challenged at PTO.

by Joe Mullin - May 24 2013, 1:15pm EST

• Lawsuits
• Patents

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/at-long-last-ricoh-and-xerox-hits-back-at-scanner-trolls/

Ping Foo / flickr

Eight months ago, small- and medium-sized businesses around the country started getting threats from mysterious six-letter entities like AllLed, GosNel, and AdzPro. The letters suggested that the network of shell companies owned several key patents that cover scanning to PDF documents, and they demanded payments of around $1,000 per worker.

Further reading

Patent trolls want $1,000—for using scanners | An alphabet soup of patent trolls is threatening end users with lawsuits. Meet the nice-guy lawyers who want $1,000 per worker for using scanners | "It's not some kind of bull. We're not trying to harass people."

It's the kind of patent licensing that, in earlier times, would typically be directed against the makers of a technology, not the end users. But the reality is that patent attacks against end users are proliferating. The Electronic Frontier Foundation noted several recent and disturbing examples in a blog post published yesterday. In April, Ars interviewed Brian Farney, one of the lawyers managing the MPHJ scheme, which controls the 40 six-letter shell companies sending infringement notices to end users. Farney said that users were the only appropriate targets of the MPHJ patents because the patents are only infringed when the scanners are combined with a local network, a step that is performed by the users. Farney said he has spoken to the scanner companies and found that they do not infringe.
After a long silence, two of the scanner companies in question, Xerox and Ricoh, have now taken joint action against MPHJ. The companies have filed an "inter partes" reexamination request at the patent office seeking to prove that the claims of one MPHJ patent, No. 7,986,426, aren't patentable.
In a joint statement, the companies note that the targets of the campaign are mostly small- and medium-sized businesses. The statement continues:

The ’426 patent has become the subject of an aggressive patent licensing campaign by various affiliates of MPHJ Technology Investments who are targeting users of the products of virtually every manufacturer of multi-function imaging equipment, including Ricoh and Xerox.
...Today’s filing demonstrates both Ricoh and Xerox’s strong commitment to their customers and authorized dealer networks. If successful, our action will both nullify the ’426 patent and help disable MPHJ’s licensing campaign against our customers. We are confident this is the right action to take to support our customers."

There are a few things that are unclear here, though. First of all, MPHJ is asserting four patents, and the scanner companies are only going after the most recent one. Second, reexams can be very long, have uncertain outcomes, and give patent-owners the opportunity to modify their claims. Xerox and Ricoh both have enough money to directly attack these patents in court, and it's unclear why they're not doing so.
Ars reached out to the companies and will update the story when we hear back.
The action by Ricoh and Xerox comes just a few days after the state of Vermont took aggressive action by suing MPHJ for violating state consumer-protection laws. The Vermont case is the first government lawsuit ever against a patent troll.
(Note: the joint press release actually references another patent number that is one number off from the MPHJ patent, but that appears to be a typo. PTO documents show the patent being reexamined is 7,986,486.)