http://www.tsn.ca/patent-troll-takes-nhl-to-court-1.209444

 

 

The National Hockey League is in court battling a "patent troll."

 

TSN has learned the league is being sued in U.S. District Court by Affinity Labs, a Texas company that alleges the NHL is violating one of its patents relating to the transmission of game broadcasts on wireless devices.

 

The NHL's Game Center Live service, the lawsuit says, "is configured to enable a wireless handheld device to receive a streaming signal of a regionally broadcast NHL game on the wireless device, even when the... device is outside of the region of the regionally broadcast NHL game."

 

Affinity said its patent applications prove the company has patents for "a number of inventions relating to creating a new media ecosystem with a portable electronic audio device, such as a smartphone, at its centre."

 

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I'm all for protecting intellectual property, but these non practicing entities that hold these patents with no intent to ever bring them market, but make their money by suing people who actually create something are a little ridiculous.

 

I'm not even sure how you can patent something as generic as that article describes.

Reminds me of all the cyber squatting cases when the Internet really exploded and a few "smart" people registered domain names they knew would be coveted.

^{I'm going to patent "item that does something" and sue the hell out of everyone.}

Same people tried suing Mark Cuban. He was on of the first to ever do live streaming of sporting events.

Patent trolls are just about the worst people in the world and a lot of the **** that can get a patent when it comes to technology is just so asinine. I hope this gets tossed out of court. 

I'm all for protecting intellectual property, but these non practicing entities that hold these patents with no intent to ever bring them market, but make their money by suing people who actually create something are a little ridiculous.

 

I'm not even sure how you can patent something as generic as that article describes.

 

Patent cases are hit or miss. Sometimes you're happy someone won and sometimes you're pissed off someone won.

 

I remember someone owned madonna.com and had to give it up. Hey if they registered it first good on them.