It feels like you are making pronouncements on something you don’t know about/have any experience with. I don’t know what you’re history is with patents and lawyers but all of them that I have worked with consider it a failure if things end up in court. That includes the sleazy ones looking for a quick buck.
Going to court is not like on TV - getting into the courtroom takes years and the cost of getting to that point can be astronomical.
Disputes start with letters, then phone calls in which demands are set out and 90% of the time things are resolved, often with lawyers approving settlements and wording. If there isn’t an agreement here and one party pushes for court then a meeting is set up before a judge who decides whether or not the case will go forwards with the judge pressing for a settlement, saying how they’ll rule based on the evidence so far, or making a summary ruling rather than scheduling a court date. 9.9% of the cases end here. Going through to this point generally costs less than $10k and validates what the lawyers are saying to a client that won’t listen to reason.
In the one in a thousand times the case goes to trial, years will go by with additional negotiations with the two parties, carrying out depositions and working through discovery as well as putting motions before the court. Of the cases that get this far, 90% or more end up in settlements because one party can’t continue the action - it’s incredibly time and money consuming and generally the outcome is known right from the start, the only reason that it gets this far is because both parties are stupid and stubborn.
I have been involved in a dozen or so IP disputes and only one got past the letter writing/phone call stage and it was resolved outside the judge’s chambers before we went in (it was a sleazy lawyer playing chicken, looking for a big settlement from IBM). It’s very obvious immediately who is in the right and lawyers on both sides will push for a quick resolution with resonable compensation. Total legal fees are typically in the hundreds of dollars - an hour or so explaining the situation to the lawyer and the creation of a letter with a quick phone call. Settlement costs are very reasonable as well, usually in the form of royalty payments going forward or the requirement that a design change so that it no longer infringes.
When arguing your rights, you should have a lawyer involved but it’s not very expensive and nor does it require you to go to court. Even getting to the letter writing stage means that somebody didn’t do their job in terms of due diligence in reviewing existing IP before going ahead with the product. For the IP owner it can awkward if the time taken to detect the infringement is excessive or that the infringer came up with the IP on their own independently as this means that the IP isn’t “non-intuitive” which is a basic requirement for a patent and they don’t want to have this challenge as it could result in the patent being negated.
Even patent trolls, and I was involved with one, want to avoid court as they want a quick resolution with a reasonable payback on their IP. They don’t want to be publicly labeled as patent trolls as that makes their targets more resistant to giving in so they want a quick and speedy resolution, usually in the form of a one time payment with either the design being changed so it no longer infringes or royalties going forward.
You don’t have to go court to protect what’s yours, the vast majority of IP disputes are resolved out of court for less than a thousand dollars amicably, quickly and fairly.
