Litigation funding is a way of leveling the playing field so that inventors and small companies can enforce their patent rights against large companies.

RT @verlanderllp: Thanks @ManagingIP for including our thoughts about what patent buyers are looking for today.

Thanks @ManagingIP for including us in this article about remote patent litigation proceedings. Most proceedings can be just as effective remotely and are certainly more efficient and cost effective.

This is a great start to helping inventors!.

This order seems to completely undercut a lot of reasons for filing in Waco.

Whenever there's a perception that inventors have an advantage, someone always takes it away.

RT @verlanderllp: Thanks @ipwatchdog for including my thoughts about the Supreme Court's disappointing denial of cert for American Axle. h….

8 years ago today, Blackbird was founded to help inventors. 12 days before, the S Ct decided Alice. IPRs were crushing inventors. Over the past 8 years, neither the S Ct nor Congress did anything to help. Yesterday, the S Ct did nothing again. We will keep fighting for inventors.

Thanks @ManagingIP for including our thoughts on the new Fintiv guidance. It's not about preserving judicial resources. The PTAB appears to think it can do a better job than the ITC or District Court.

Blackbird licensed its cordless power supply patent portfolio to Chervon. So happy to help the inventor realize value for an invention that is widely used by the industry!

First, TC Heartland made it hard for inventors to sue in EDTX. Now, "convenience" mandamus orders are stopping inventors from suing in WDTX. As we said in this @ManagingIP article, seems defendants are just trying to get into a more favorable court.

Petitioners have figured out that stipulating not to raise invalidity arguments in district court that were raised in an IPR is, in fact, essentially the same as the statutory estoppel. In other words, it's an easy way to get around Fintiv.

The Solicitor General is certainly right that a review of patent eligibility law is desperately needed. This case should have been easy. That it wasn’t is plain evidence of the quagmire created by Alice and its progeny.

Ideally, the Supreme Court will make eligibility a low bar that merely excludes discoveries and not inventions, and let novelty and nonobviousness do the heavy lifting. But, it would be a great improvement just to have a clear test for abstractness. #questionoftheweek.

RT @verlanderllp: Thank you @ipwatchdog for hosting a terrific conference and inviting us to speak on the current importance of venue trans….

Wendy Verlander will join a panel at the @ipwatchdog Patent Litigation Masters conference discussing the Federal Circuit’s troubling mandamus orders transferring cases out of the Western District of Texas. #questionoftheweek.

Thanks @ManagingIP for including Blackbird in this insightful article about litigation funding disclosures. Seems that defense counsel said the quiet part out loud – an intent to use this information to decide whether to settle a case and for how much.

"If you can never quiet title to a piece of property, then that greatly diminishes the value of that property. When it comes to patents, that’s presumably exactly what Google wants. Its recently policy statement calling for patent reform basically says as much.".

“'By creating this myth about trolls', it disincentivises universities and small inventors because it removes their ability to benefit from their intellectual property and pushes them to be involved in marketing or manufacturing, which they don’t enjoy, [O'Malley] said.".

Big companies need IP less than small companies and are taking advantage of that inequity in trying to limit patent rights.