The comment that follows is from Life360 CEO Chris Hulls in response to the 2/9/15 IP CloseUp post, “Family App Developer Says it’s the Victim of a Patent ‘Troll’ — Research Indicates Otherwise.”
“Bruce, Chris Hulls from Life360 here.
“I genuinely appreciate your interest in this case. I would encourage you to dig into this further before you draw any final conclusions, as the facts may surprise you.
“Also wanted to clarify a few points from your story.
“1) We have never said AGIS was formed as a shell entity. I believe they are a dying business and the lawyers at Kenyon are opportunistically trying to monetize their patents. I believe that if you do further research you’ll see that AGIS is essentially a one man show run out of a Jupiter, Florida mansion, and that their core business is likely failing. If you look at their product manuals, you will see that the designs look old and amateurish, and my guess is they are only there for show at this point.
“2) If you review the patents they are asserting against us, I think you will find it is a huge stretch to say we are infringing. In fact, given the amount of prior art we collected, I think it’s fair to question the validity of the patents overall. They were envisioned for a product drastically different than ours, and they are taking advantage of the claims’ obscure and indefinite wording to fit us in their bucket. This position was validated at our Markman hearing where the judge ruled that four of their claims were indefinite, and this language was scattered throughout their patents.
“3) You mention that Kenyon is a reputable law firm. We thought the same and were also surprised that they took this case, but have heard rumors that they might be having hard times and are moving the troll route to stay afloat. I can’t say this definitively, but as another example, the same lawyer Mark Hannemann in our case recently filed a case on behalf of Bradium Technologies against Microsoft (Case 1:15-cv-00031-RGA in Delaware). If you look into Bradium, you come across this site:http://www.ip-holdings.com/ which appears to be a patent holding company which advertises their ability to transfer and monetize IP.
“I’m willing to have a dialogue with anyone who has questions about this case including AGIS and Kenyon and Kenyon. If it isn’t a troll case, they shouldn’t be ashamed to talk about their actions. To that end, if you’d like to interview me, and also invite them to participate, I’m game! I’d only ask that you be extremely critical of both of us, and cut through the legal veneer to get to the heart of the matter.”
ipcloseup.com 