The following article is from Forbes May 5th issue. The title is not what interested me but the content information regarding re-exams. It is pointed out that re-exams can be asked for by any number of entities and that when the govt. does a re-exam it does not stop the clock on the life of a patent. I had never read this anywhere else and I wanted to share.

God Bless

marc

"The Unlucky Troll

Asher Hawkins 05.05.08

One of the original patent trolls is sitting on a licensing gold mine. Too bad he may never find out what it's really worth

Just about every web site that includes an image makes use of a patent issued in 1993. It covers the process by which an electronic file is compressed for faster transmission over a communications line, most commonly via the photo format known as JPEG (for "Joint Photographic Experts Group"). The owner of this patent is Anthony Brown, a Chicago lawyer who years ago was among the first to be tagged a "patent troll"--pejorative jargon for someone who demands undeserved royalties.

Over the years Brown, 61, has collected small one-time fees for this patent, most of them between $35,000 and $50,000 and from companies including Sara Lee(nyse: SLE - news - people ), United Airlines, FTD and Sears. But should we now be feeling sorry for Brown? If his patent is valid, he could be collecting hundreds of millions of dollars. But the craziness of the patent system has put a halt to his royalty stream, for now.

Brown first noticed the JPEG patent after quitting his corporate law practice in 1996 and raising just under $1 million from friends and family to fund his new patent-licensing firm. After several months of trolling the national patent database, he found what he'd been looking for. The brainchild of two Philadelphia-area engineers, the JPEG patent lay dormant after being issued. Brown cold-called one patent holder, then 70, and the widow of the other, and persuaded them to assign him control in exchange for a chunk of any licensing fees recovered.

Then came Brown's first roadblock: A petition filed in 2000 by parties unknown asked the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to reexamine whether the processes the patent described were novel enough to deserve a patent. The feds agreed to the review, a common practice if the questions raised seem substantial. The catch is that during the review the holder of the patent can't demand licensing fees, and the patent's life doesn't get extended accordingly. The reexam of the JPEG patent lasted seven years (the average takes less than two). In the end some fancy wordsmithery allowed Brown to retain control of the patent's pertinent provision.

Brown then launched a wave of lawsuits last summer, demanding anywhere from $25,000 to $15 million, depending on a company's revenues and reliance on the Web. One licensee, court records show, was Kraft Foods (nyse: KFT - news - people ), which was subject to a $5 million fee under Brown's "royalty schedule." Kraft agreed to an undisclosed fee.

But last year saw yet another anonymous challenge. This one was filed by Chicago patent attorney Vernon Francissen, who declines to identify his client. Francissen suggested the JPEG patent's current version had slipped through an overburdened system and was being applied too broadly. In March the Patent Office agreed to a second reexam, again putting up a roadblock to Brown's licensing campaign.

"I just think it's disgraceful that our system allows this to happen," Brown says. Of course, that's not exactly what potential licensees, such as online shoe retailer Zappos.com and telecom giant Motorola(nyse: MOT - news - people ), are thinking. In late 2010 the patent expires--and there's no limit on the number of times "anonymous" parties can ask for a reexam."