Apple ordered to pay $532.9 million to a 8th-grade dropout patent troll

Apple was ordered by the courts to pay Smartflash LLC for willful infringement of three U.S. Patents.

In a move of sheer legal brilliance, Patrick Racz, a 8th grade drop out created a LLC called Smartflash which makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and has been set up specifically to exploit the U.S. patent system and has successfully claimed royalties for technology Apple invented.At first Apple refused to pay off this company for the ideas their employees spent years innovating but unfortunately Apple has been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the U.S. Patent court system. Which in the end sided with Smartflash LLC.

Despite Apple and its legal savvy attorneys that battled with the likes of the mega corporation of Samsung for violating its patents One has to wonder how the hell Apple lost to the likes of an 8th grade dropout who created a trollish company called Smartflash LLC.

Brad Caldwell, a Dallas-based patent infringement specialist who represented Smartflash stated.

“I think the reason we won, is because we focused on the questions that were going to be presented to the jury: Were the patents valid? Did Apple infringe? Was the infringement willful? Apple’s attorneys paraded witness after witness through courtroom who couldn’t be bothered to read the patents.”

Apple, according to Caldwell, focused on everything but the issue at hand: Three digital rights management patents granted Patrick Racz and others between 2008 and 2012.

During the trial Apple’s lawyers got Patrick Racz on the stand and they brought up his education and the fact that he dropped out of the 8th grade, his only expertise was horticultural training and the fact that he was from a farming family on the Isle of Jersey. Apples lawyers asked him, according to Caldwell: “Did you invent the Internet?” “Did you invent touch screen technology?”

Patrick Racz, had not done these things but Augustin Farrugia, Apple’s director of security and its key witness, had previously designed the national banking system for Singapore. But on the stand he said he too hadn’t gotten around to actually reading Racz’ patents.

Because of Apple’s arrogance in court and the fact that, according to Caldwell,

“Apple thumbed their nose at other people, and acted like we’re Apple and have no need to respect other people’s intellectual property.”

The Jury, deliberated for eight hours. They found for the plaintiff. It’s not clear where Racz got the technical know how to file these patents, or why the U.S. Patent Office should have granted them but in this case Apple let their pride cost them half a billion dollars to a 8thgrade dropout who certainly had his day in court and laughed all the way to the bank.