The Supreme Court's ruling in MedImmune v. Genentech, which held that a patent licensee need not breach its license agreement to file a declaratory judgment action, overturned a Federal Circuit rule and will affect not only the law regarding declaratory judgment actions by licensees, but also the Federal Circuit's declaratory judgment jurisprudence generally. http://docket.medill.northwestern.edu/archives/003377.php Here is the part that has lawyers saying that the ruling might affect declaratory judgment jurisprudence generally. I suspect that it won't be long before at least one or more of America's most dangerous teachers will be telling people that they should use this ruling to have the judgment vacated because the court didn't have jurisdiction. They didn't have jurisdiction because the Plaintiff didn't present any evidence nor did he have a witness with first hand knowledge testifying under penalty of perjury so the Plaintiff didn't prove his case therefore the matter remained hypothetical.
Regardless of demagogue claims, I doubt that the courts will go there. There is at least an economic basis for claiming that a company's patent litigation activities have broad fair trade and anti-trust consequences even when they are not currently suing a party they might later choose to sue. Mostly, the courts just want to get the consumer debt caseload disposed of.
As well they should. But in order to make an impact of any kind on their caseload it is going to take a very large number of people willing to learn how to defend themselves in court and actually doing it. The problem is those dangerous teachers I have been speaking about are out there teaching such nonsense as Modern Money Mechanics, The two faces of debt, The creature from Jekyl Island and other such publications. That isn't even a good start on the nutball theories that are out there. At least one clown who goes by the name of Ray but won't give a last name has a "ministry" that people can donate to in return for having the FTC force the credit bureaus to remove all the derogatory tradelines, force the court to give back all the money they took from the debtor and throw the criminal judges and the attorneys in jail. Minimum donation to put all that magic to work for you is $2200.00. After that the price gets much steeper if you want some real serious magic which he refuses to talk about until you have made your minimum donation. Then there is Clyde Hyde, Kurt Riggins and the abominal snowman otherwise known as Lewis Ewing. Riggins and Ewing work together along with Dave Myrland and are able to beat all traffic tickets, marijuana smoking indictments and much, much more. These people do nothing more than raise false hopes for the gullible and add even more to the case loads of the courts.
There may be legal tools the consumer can use given a knowledge of FDCPA and FCRA, but going down the above paths, they just lose, in court and in their wallets. Looks like these jokers are mining the same vein as the worst of the CAs. I thought you couldn't squeeze blood from a stone, but maybe I was wrong.
In a sense at least you were wrong. The sad part is that untold numbers of people spend thousands of dollars on the nonsense put out by these so called and self-styled experts. Take Louis Ewing for example. In one case two elderly sisters wanted a zoning change on a piece of property they jointly owned. A rather large tract of land within the limits of some city and wanted a zoning change to allow them to subdivide the property and sell residential tracts. The city fathers refused the zoning change for whatever reason so they paid Louis Ewing $5,000 each to force the city to grant their wishes. Needless to say they wasted their money. Another gentleman in Washington State who was a county commissioner and apparently got into some kind of scrape relating to his office as county commissioner. He also paid Ewing $5,000 to beat the case. When the dust had settled the man was in jail and no longer a county commissioner. Seems the court didn't take too kindly to the foul language Ewing used in the documents he prepared and had the man file. Foul language is Ewing's "trademark" and all of the court documents he prepares for people contain such language. Ewing prepares the defense and has it sent to them Express mail, overnight delivery so it arrives on the day of the trial so they have little or no time to review or rewrite it to exclude the foul language. Ewing demands his money in cash wrapped in aluminum foil. It would not be hard to imagine that he probably uses the aluminum foil to make geodesic hats with which to ward off the evil spirits. That theory may be somewhat bolstered by the fact that he claims to have bar cards from a couple of Indian tribes.
There are ways you find the right professional, and just choosing the first yahoo with bluster who says what you want to hear is not one of them.
