Cloudfare’s CEO ,Matthew Prince said recently that his company is going to double the amount of money to kill Blackbird’s patent and is working with State Legislator’s to block Blackbird’s business. Blackbird sued Cloudfare , claiming infringement of US Patent No. 6,453, 335, few weeks ago Cloudfare told the strategy it would use to fight back. The company pledged not to seek to invalidate the ‘335 patent, but will spend $50000 on a bounty seeking to gather priority art and knock out all Blackbird owned patent.
Prince wrote:
“We are excited to report that a friend in the industry has made an anonymous donation of $50,000 to support our effort to invalidate the Blackbird Tech patents. That means that we are now we committing at least $100,000 to the effort to find prior art on and initiate actions to invalidate the Blackbird’s patents.”
The initial bounty was split-up with $20,000 going towards the particular patent used to sue Cloudfare and $30,000 dedicated to other Blackbird patent. Cloudfare and its backer have gotten so many priority art submission on patent used against Cloudfare that 100% of newly donated $50,000 will go towards finding prior art on the other Blackbird patent.
Blackbird Technologies, founded by two former big firms lawyers said that, it has new model, that allows for more efficient monetization of patent. Essentially Blackbird cuts cost by acting both lawyer and client, a move that Cloudfare lawyer believe may violate attorney ethics rules. Cloudfare has asked legal regulators to take a look at the business, which Prince says,” dangerous new model of patent trolling.”
