If someone loses a patent lawsuit very badly—to the point where they face orders to pay attorneys’ fees—you wouldn’t think they would be eager to come back to court with a nearly identical lawsuit. But that’s what has happened with this month’s patent. What’s more, the lawyer representing the patent owner, William Ramey, has been ordered to pay attorneys’ fees no fewer than five times in recent years.
U.S. Patent No. 10,820,147 is owned by Traxcell Technologies. It’s not clear what, if anything, Traxcell ever made. The company applied for patents back in 2002. By 2004, it had a bare-bones website stating that its mission “is to provide leading edge technology and innovation to in [sic] the field of telecommunications.” Today, its business is pretty clear—Traxcell is a patent troll. The company’s website has little information beyond its patents, which have been used in dozens of lawsuits since 2017.
The key claim of the ‘147 patent is long, but it essentially describes a wireless device that collects and shows location information, and also includes traffic congestion information. There’s also the “feature” that the device can allow, or disallow, tracking (a standard feature on modern smartphones).
This patent has come up in more than 20 of Traxcell’s lawsuits in the last two years, with its litigation picking up steam as the patent’s expiration date of September 2022 drew near. It’s been used to sue major cell phone companies like T-Mobile and Verizon, the makers of online maps like Google and Apple, and delivery and gig companies. It’s sued FlightAware for using publicly available flight-tracking information, and the Curb app for tracking taxis, and Instacart for tracking its own shoppers.
“Objectively Baseless Theories”
Traxcell was scheduled to bring this patent to trial next week in a federal Texas court. The trial actually would have been the conclusion of Traxcell’s second lawsuit against Verizon. Since it’s coming back for another round, one might think that Traxcell’s first lawsuit was a big success. That’s no
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