SonicWALL Becomes a Patent Troll?

The following is excerpted from an April 16, 2010 post by Alex Eckelberry at the Sunbelt Blog:

SonicWALL, a company I’ve had a lot of respect for in the past, has apparently decided to improve its revenue outlook by going after other software companies for alleged patent infringement.  Disappointing.

The patents are all over the place, and don’t mean much for our products.  We are asking them for more clarity as to how exactly our products allegedly infringe on their patents, as we are a bit confused. 

A link to the demand letter is available in the post here.

Comments

[Gena777]

There is one reason that the NPE ("patent troll") business model has become increasingly popular: it works. It is also legal, and often helps protect independent inventors and SMEs from exploitation of their intellectual property by larger, more powerful entities. Notably, it is almost invariably such multinational corporations that complain most about NPEs -- because, before the latter became so prevalent, greedy corporations could more often infringe SMEs' IP with impunity. Although abuse of the system should be condemned, most so-called trolls do nothing worse than Wall Street traders, for instance. Like it or not, NPEs are here to stay. And that may be a good thing.
http://www.generalpatent.com/media/videos/patent-troll