“Stupid Patent” Award From Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation gives its monthly booby prize in part with an eye toward shining a light on what it considers egregious troll activity, and sometimes more specifically spotlighting patents that it maintains would almost certainly be trashed by “Alice.” That, as this post explains, is Alice v. CLS Bank, the 2014 Supreme Court decision which held “abstract ideas implemented on a generic computer are not patent eligible.” February’s prize went to US Patent No. 8,738,435, a “method and apparatus for presenting personalized content relating to offered products and services.” Some might say “Dah,” as they notice that sort of thing seems to occur from the moment they hit the on-bottom of their internet-capable device until the moment, if ever, that they turn it off. Which to give the devil his due, doesn’t per se mean that some neglected entity didn’t figure out how to make that happen and have some right to try to get its propers. In any case, the entity that holds patent 8,738,435 has sued more than 100 companies. Twelve of those lawsuits were filed just in the month of February, and those who follow this particular field of current events will probably guess which district of which state they were filed in.