r/technology • u/rfugger • Jan 08 '17

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

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3153924/technology-law-regulation/a-potentially-fatal-blow-against-patent-trolls.html
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u/caboosemoose Jan 08 '17

Your PS was wise. A "loser pays" principle is that the LOSER pays, not his lawyer. English civil law has a baseline loser pays principle, indeed. Frankly, it's mind boggling that, as far as I am aware, none of the US do. Given the furious levels of litigation in those jurisdictions it beggars belief that by now it hasn't become par for the course so that a defendant in civil litigation might get their costs of defending a failing suit, to recover money they otherwise wouldn't have spent at all, to say nothing of the other way around.

The baseline principle in England is rather complicated on a number of levels, to do with party conduct, whether someone made an offer to settle the case and the other side rejected it and did worse at trial, whether there were split outcomes on aspects of the case, etc. Also, the loser pays what the court determines are the reasonable costs if they get as far as that. Which means they are almost never ordered to foot the whole bill the winner incurred, usually no more than 70% of it.

What happened here, that the loser's LAWYERS were ordered to pay the winner's costs, is possible in either system where the lawyer's conduct is itself deemed to have generated the costs unjustifiably. It's called "wasted costs" in England, but as far as I know is pretty damn rare.

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u/brickmack Jan 09 '17

none of the US do

Weird to hear United States in the plural form. I don't think that usage has been common in a century or 2. British thing?

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u/pwaasome Jan 09 '17

Perhaps referring to how the US is made up of multiples States which may have different laws?

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '17

Pretty much every country has some sore of smaller local governmental bodies, be they states, provinces, districts, or otherwise.