In the U.S., we don’t expect or allow government officials – including judges--to be speech police. Courts are allowed to restrain speech only in

Courts Shouldn’t Stifle Patent Troll Victims’ Speech

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2021-06-15 12:30:06

In the U.S., we don’t expect or allow government officials – including judges--to be speech police. Courts are allowed to restrain speech only in the rarest circumstances, subject to strict limitations. So we were troubled to learn that a judge in Missouri has issued an order stifling the speech of a small company that’s chosen to speak out about a patent troll lawsuit that was filed against it.

Mycroft AI, a company with nine employees that makes open-source voice technology, published a blog post on February 5 describing how it had been threatened by a patent troll called Voice Tech Corporation. Like all patent trolls, Voice Tech doesn’t offer any services or products. It simply owns patents, which it acquired through more than a decade of one-party argumentation with the U.S. Patent Office.

Voice Tech’s two patents describe nothing more than using voice commands, together with a mobile device, to perform computer commands. It’s the basic statement of an idea, without any executable instructions, that’s been an idea in science fiction for more than 50 years. (In fact, Mycroft is named after a supercomputer in the Robert Heinlein novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.) When Voice Tech used these patents to threaten and then sue [PDF] Mycroft AI, the company’s leadership decided not to pay the $30,000 that was demanded for these ridiculous patents. Instead, they fought back—and they asked their community for help.