I find the Electronic Frontier Foundation ("EFF") to be an acquired taste, and many folks think its abbreviation is a fitting description. Over the last couple years, however, I have noticed that EFF has finally found a truly constructive outlet and message. EFF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit self-described as "the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world." My original perception, now perhaps outdated, of EFF was an organization founded to provide legal representation to hackers and to undercut intellectual property rights holders. If you believe in Wikipedia, you can read a bit about EFF's history here.
What brought EFF to my attention recently was its successful bid to invalidate several claims of of a patent troll named Personal Audio LLC. The patent is U.S. Reg. No. 8112504 (the "'504 Patent") for "System for disseminating media content representing episodes in a serialized sequence." According to the EFF's original petition, the patent had been asserted against at least seven different defendants. The EFF interceded by bringing a relatively new type of administrative procedure with the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") called an inter partes review ("IPR").
IPRs came about with the America Invents Act, and are intended to be faster option than traditional litigation for determining the validity of a patent. If the USPTO institutes an IPR based on a petition, the USPTO is expected to issue a final written decision within one year after institution of the IPR. You can read more about these proceedings at the USPTO's website. we have found IPRs to be a great way to dispute the validity of a patent because it provides a process for review of the patent claims by experts in the field at the USPTO. As you can imagine, this is helpful because the panels tend to quickly understand a disputed technology and similar technologies. It is a of venue to have a patent evaluated by a jury of the inventor's peers, so to speak. Another useful feature of an IPR is that the USPTO will typically provide public claim constructions (definitions) for indefinite (odd) terms in the claims being challenged.
Personal Audio, LLC sued multiple defendants (e.g., CBS, NBC, Fox, and howstuffworks.com) for infringing the '504 Patent because of they way they were serving up audio/audiovisual content. The EFF would not have been allowed to join those lawsuite (other than to file a brief as an interested third party). This is why the IPR proceedings are so interesting, because the EFF could file its own inter partes review of the '504 patent even though the EFF has not been sued (and was not likely to ever be sued). So using the IPR procedure, the EFF was able to come off the bench into the game. These IPRs were targeted as part of the EFF's "Patent Busting Project" which allows people to submit their old technology (that predates existing notorious patents). The EFF then takes this information and invalidates patents using it.
The EFF also provides some other useful/fun services. For example, it regularly posts what it calls its "Takedown Hall of Shame" which is a posting of obnoxious or abusive takedown notices. One of the better awards is the "Raspberry Beret Lifetime Achievement Award" granted to Prince (f/k/a The Artist Formerly Known as Prince).
Many bloggers and software developers may also find the EFF's guides on what you can/can't do to be informative. There is both a blogger's legal guide and a coder's FAQ for both reverse engineering and software vulnerability reporting.
P.S. – IPR documents are open to the public and can be searched at the USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board portal by patent number or application number.
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