2. Now turning to our topic at hand, from a public communications standpoint, what are the benefits of success in a reexamination?
There is a logical, direct connection between the legal benefits of success and the benefits that naturally accrue from a related communications initiative. Obviously, a favorable outcome at the PTO – whether you’re defending or challenging a patent – can affect future court deliberations, short- and long-term stock prices, capitalization, acquisitions, and other transactions. For defending companies, success represents a vote of confidence that deters competitors or others by sending the clear message that your patents are strong. A strong communications campaign will leverage that success to the hilt on an ongoing basis. When, for example, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sought re-examination of a C2 Communications Technologies patent (No. 6,243,373), C2 Executive Vice President, Secretary and CFO Stephen Weintraub spoke to PC World, confidently and effectively underscoring the company’s current strength by referencing past success: “We don’t expect that they’ll be successful…the company and the patent office both have examined its validity and not found any problems, and the service providers that C2 sued couldn’t find a way to strike it down either.” The faster such messages get sent, the better. The more prominently and virally, they appear online, the more of a deterrent impact it will have on potential challenges. If you are challenging a patent, and the outcome is positive for you, the same viral news dissemination puts an enormous burden on the defending company to explain the result to their shareholders and other vital constituents. It can torpedo their stock values instantaneously and significantly weaken their negotiating position. The experience of Tessera Technologies Inc. in 2008 is a well-known case in point, as stock values tumbled immediately upon the Patent Office rejecting every claim of that company’s 6,133,627 patent in ex parte reexamination.