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Cisco Blogger Dragged Into Patent Lawyer’s Battle With Company

Last Update: 4/15/2008 5:25:08 PM

By John Letzing

A Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) employee who authored a controversial blog about
so-called “patent trolls” has continued to draw unwanted attention to the
company, this time being dragged into a high-profile tussle between a law firm
and one of its ousted attorneys.

In a filing last week in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
California, Cisco and its employee, Richard Frenkel, say they will move to quash
a subpoena served by Scott Harris to have Frenkel deposed.

Harris, an intellectual property attorney, is suing his former employer, San
Diego-based Fish & Richardson P.C., for forcing him out of the firm and
wrongfully withholding his wages. Harris drew scrutiny last year as the inventor
of patents later used to sue Fish & Richardson clients, including Google Inc.
(GOOG), and was told to resign after news reports about the situation emerged.

Among the first to report on Harris’s connection to patents used against his
firm’s clients was Frenkel, who was then blogging anonymously as the “Patent
Troll Tracker.” A “troll” is a pejorative term used for firms that buy patents
only to file infringement suits against large companies. Frenkel is a director in
Cisco’s intellectual property group.

Harris’s suit against Fish & Richardson, filed in Federal District Court in
Chicago, claims the firm had authorized his patent activities, and that it
falsely claimed ownership of his patents. Although Harris has sought to subpoena
Frenkel for a deposition as part of his lawsuit, it was not immediately clear
why. Harris, who now runs a patent consulting firm in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.,
did not respond to a request for comment.

In their filing in California, Cisco and Frenkel say they will contest the
subpoena in a San Jose court in June. A Cisco spokesman did not immediately
respond to a request for further comment.

Blogger Unmasked

Fish & Richardson has filed a countersuit against Harris, claiming he misused
resources to amass his own patent portfolio and then sold them to firms he knew
would use the patents to file lawsuits against the firm’s clients.

One of the attorneys representing Harris in his suit against Fish & Richardson,
Raymond Niro, helped reveal Frenkel’s identity late last year, when he offered a
$5,000 bounty to anyone willing to unmask the author of the Patent Troll Tracker
blog.

Frenkel later disclosed his identity in February, and he and Cisco were then
almost immediately sued by a pair of Texas attorneys who had represented
plaintiffs against Cisco and other companies.

The Texas attorneys claim that Frenkel defamed them with his anonymous online
posts, and that Cisco condoned Frenkel’s blog, which featured harsh criticism of
both firms that sue large technology companies and the attorneys who represent
them. Cisco has denied that it knew of Frenkel’s blogging, and that it condoned
what he was doing.

Cisco belongs to a group of large companies called the Coalition for Patent
Fairness, which has lobbied intensively for legislation that could make filing
patent suits a more difficult process for small firms.

Cisco and other coalition members, including Google and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT),
have long complained about the large volume of patent lawsuits they face every
year from firms that speculate in patents. The legislation the coalition has
promoted, The Patent Reform Act, is expected to receive a Senate vote soon. A
version of the legislation was passed in the House last year.

Shortly after Frenkel’s identity was revealed, Cisco altered its blogging policy
so that employees are required to disclose their identities when writing about
the company.

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