U.S. Magistrate Judge Dave Lee Brannon ruled that Shipping and Transit’s litigation fit the definition of a “nuisance” lawsuit, under which the plaintiff filed multiple suits against a large and diverse group of defendants hoping that each would settle.
Shipping and Transit LLC, a Florida-based company that has filed litigation in hundreds of cases over more than a decade where it claims to have invented a method of tracking packages as well as the vehicles in which they’re delivered, has been ordered by federal judges in two separate cases to pay litigation fees to lawsuit defendants.
In the most recent case, which was ruled on July 10, Shipping and Transit LLC had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against lensdiscounters.com, a division of LD Vision Group Inc., alleging that the defendant had infringed four patents related to the tracking and reporting the location of vehicles. The defendant denied all allegations.
The plaintiff then filed a motion to dismiss its lawsuit in September 2016, three months after the litigation was filed, but Shipping and Transit still sought a $45,000 “license fee” for the disputed patents.
On July 10, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dave Lee Brannon ruled that Shipping and Transit’s litigation fit the definition of a “nuisance” lawsuit under which the plaintiff filed suit against a large and diverse group of defendants hoping that each would quickly settle the litigation.
“It is this Court’s view that Plaintiff’s motivation was to extract a nuisance settlement on the theory that Defendant would rather pay a ‘license fee’’ than be subjected to what Plaintiff described would be an aggressively litigated patent infringement lawsuit,” the Southern District of Florida judge wrote in his decision.
“The boilerplate nature of Plaintiff’s complaint, the absence of a request for the identity of Defendant’s shippers in the pre-suit demand letter, the unconvincing argument that the case became ‘not worth pursuing’’ after initial discovery, and the hundreds of substantially similar if not identical lawsuits filed in this district, suggests that Plaintiff’s strategy is predatory and aimed at reaping financial advantage from defendants who are unwilling or unable to engage in the expense of patent litigation,” Judge Brannon’s decision continued.
Ultimately, the judge ruled, Shipping and Transit was required to pay defendant lensdiscounters.com $36,317.50 in attorney’s fees. This was only the second time in over a decade that Shipping and Transit had been ordered to pay the legal fees of an entity it sued. The first came just three days earlier, when California federal Judge Andrew Guilford also ordered the plaintiff to pay defendant Logistics Planning Services, a Minnesota-based boutique freight transportation management company, attorneys’ fees and costs related to patent infringement litigation the plaintiff had filed against LPS.
“Plaintiff’s business model involves filing hundreds of patent infringement lawsuits, mostly against small companies, and leveraging the high cost of litigation to extract settlements for amounts less than $50,000,” Judge Guilford wrote. “These tactics present a compelling need for deterrence and to discourage exploitative litigation by patentees who have no intention of testing the merits of their claims.”
In his decision, the judge mandated that LPS file supporting documents regarding its requested attorney fees, but also suggested that both sides agree on a $20,000 award to settle the case.
