Cisco Lawyer Outs Himself as Patent Troll Tracker
February 22nd, 2008
Could rewards help identify bloggers involved in internet misconduct?
Well, hope you didn’t spend the reward money yet. As you may have heard, some IP litigators have been in a frenzy over an unknown thorn in their side who identified himself on the internet as blogger “Patent Troll Tracker”. As it turns out, The Patent Troll Tracker, (AKA Rick Frenkel) is an IP lawyer at Cisco, and has made quite a name for himself shedding light on the dirty little secrets behind patent holding “shell companies” alleged litigation practices. One Chicago Lawyer, Raymond Niro of Niro Scavone Haller & Niro finally had enough and offered a $10,000 reward for the identity of the Patent Troll Tracker. Soon after, Frenkel outed himself in his blog dated February 23, 2008.
Law.com has posted a related story about some patent litigators who believed Frenkel provided a legitimate service by heightening the awareness related to needed patent reform.
Regardless of your own personal point of view, there is another side of this story that is appreciated by computer forensics and electronic discovery professionals: A growing trend in lawyers trying to determine the identity of anonymous individuals on the internet that are accused of some type of “misconduct”. Now more than ever, IP lawyers are hired by their clients to identify and pursue those they believe are behind blogger misconduct, on-line trade secret misappropriation, defamation, copyright infringement or internet trademark violations. Clearly, Mr. Frenkel’s activities were far more innocent, but some bloggers use their anonymity to engage in bad behavior that is damaging to companies, their employees and shareholders. These mis-guided bloggers have helped create an industry dedicated to tracking them down. Could rewards be the new tool for outing these types of bad guys?
More information can be found regarding this story at…
http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/26/1827225&from=rss
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Impact Forensics, LLC is a Chicago – based computer forensics and electronic discovery firm specializing in Intellectual Property & Trade Secret - related matters.