Remember the "Mono si safe" argument based on the idea that ...

[GreyGeek]

Microsoft would never sue end users over patent infringement, because there'd be no meaningful financial return? The argument went that Mono was safe, because no rational actor would sue individuals, only deep pockets.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120228112427183

Guess what?

Someone has just sued some end users over alleged patent infringement.

Courthouse News had the news first that EveryMD has filed a lawsuit [PDF] alleging patent infringement against Facebook end users, specifically Facebook users who have business accounts, naming Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as defendants, after Facebook refused to pay a royalty for EveryMD's patents. The complaint also names as defendants "Does 1-1000", which it defines as "each a presently unidentified one of an estimated 4,000,000 additional Facebook business account holders that are subject to the jurisdiction of this court."

It looks like we have a new patent troll, going after end users 1,000 at a time. That's going to be 4,000 court cases spread out over the rest of your lives. IF they win this case against some high profile but innocent users, they'll send legal billy club letters to as many as they can find ASAP... "Pay us $5,000 or we'll sue for $1 Million!", or something similar.

A couple years ago a Minnesota mom was hit with a $1.5M lawsuit judgment for "downloading 24 songs", that's $62,500 per song. It was later jacked up to $1.93M with legal costs included, or a nice, round $80,000 per song, and our own "Justice Dept" supported it. A few months later the SCOTUS rejected a petition to hear a similar case with fines of only $750 for each of 16 songs.

Why do cases like this need to be fought at every turn? Even the EFF is defending the fine imposed in the last trial, $54,000, but states:

The copyright law requires that a transfer take place, such as a download, before someone can be considered distributing anything. "Distribution liability based on anything less would transform [the Copyright Act] into an unbounded form of civil attempt liability, even where no copies had ever been distributed and thus no harm had ever been inflicted on the copyright owner," the EFF brief says.
"Getting this issue right is also crucial in light of the extraordinary penalties available in copyright cases," the EFF adds. "A finding of infringement can open a gateway to statutory damages far out of proportion to any actual harm--as in this case, where the third jury found the defendant liable for over $1,500,000 when the reasonable actual damages were no more than $360."

Treble damages for a $15 song, retail, is only $45.

[SteveRiley]

This paragraph caught my attention:

While this would seem to be another SCO-like effort to get a big company to pay up to protect its end users, or in the alternative to get $500 or so from each end user, I can't help but hope that by suing politicians and all companies and individuals with a business account page on Facebook at least some of those sued will wake up and realize that software patents are an evil and unnecessary weight on the marketplace that seriously is damaging innovators in ways the USPTO seems incapable of preventing. And now, just as so many tried to warn, it's threatening everyone, you, me, anyone trying to do any kind of business and using the Internet. If the law permits something, someone *will* do it sooner or later. Never assume that lawyers can't figure a way to try to get money from IP law.

Emphasis added -- let's hope it'll work out this way!

BTW, not sure if you noticed update #2:

Oh, brother. Look what Facebook has been going through with these plaintiffs since February of 2010, when Frank M. Weyer and Troy K. Javaher sued Facebook for alleged patent infringement, adding Facebook as defendant with MySpace, which they sued the month before. Here's the docket sheet showing the case in the US District Court for the Central District of California, currently administratively closed, only to be opened if the patents get reinstated on appeal, which the judge said is unlikely. So, now they turn around and sue three presidential candidates and every business account holder on Facebook, with patents they've been told are not valid. Please notice how many times Facebook tried to get this case dismissed, and consider the cost of all this. I wish the USPTO and the Federal Circuit and the US Supreme Court would.