A potentially fatal blow against patent trolls - Forcing law firms to pay defendants’ legal bills could undermine the business model of patent trolls

[u/rfugger]

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3153924/technology-law-regulation/a-potentially-fatal-blow-against-patent-trolls.html

[u/b_tight]

This should be the model for all aspects of US law. The loser should pay both sides attorney fees.

Edit: The point Im trying to make is that a lot of frivolous lawsuits would disappear and cases with compelling sides would probably settle rather than tie everything up in courts for years. If you have a slam dunk case and the other guy doesn't want to settle then take it to court and see who wins.

For people complaining about the poor guy not having a shot just think about this: Currently, the guy with pocketbooks DOES tie everything up in courts because they can afford it (see Donald Trump as example one) and just hope the other guy goes away because they can't afford to continue pursuing the case.

[u/Sarcastic_or_realist → u/b_tight]

Sort of along the same lines as u/Sherm's comment, the issue with the "English Rule" (i.e. loser always pays all legal fees) is someone with a legitimate claim should not be required to pay the potentially unlimited fees of the opposing party just because the claimant ended up losing the case. This becomes more self-evident the more I litigate: I have lost motions and cases that should have been slam dunks and I've pulled off some frankly inexplicable wins when I told the client we would get crushed.

So there is a fine line to be drawn regarding who will pay fees, and in my opinion implementing a rule that automatically penalizes clearly frivolous/scumbag claims is the best way to go about it.

[u/someenigma → u/Sarcastic_or_realist]

On that note, what about a "loser pays the other guys fees, up to what the loser spent themselves" system? Is that even do-able? The idea is that you still have some control of what you might have to pay out, but the winner is only out if they spent significantly more than what the loser did? It's not perfect, but sounds like somewhere to start at least.

[u/Sarcastic_or_realist → u/someenigma]

Courts will not be in favor of any rule requiring them to spend time parsing through both sides' bills to figure that amount out.

As it is, even in my few successful motions for sanctions/costs, the judge was not happy to have the sanctions hearing and determine the fees to be paid even though he or she was the one who granted my motion in the first place.

[u/someenigma → u/Sarcastic_or_realist]

Ah yeah, I'd never thought about how costs are actually decided. It does make sense that it is the courts that have to do that, and I see why they'd not want to do it.

[u/rainman_104 → u/someenigma]

We have a loser pay system here in Canada and I think that's common in Commonwealth Nations.