Details of the “patent troll” Minnesota consent decree

The first-in-the-nation settlement between the Minnesota Attorney General and patent litigant MPHJ Technology Investments has been widely reported, including by  the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Law360, and Ars Technica. But none of these outlets have posted a copy of the settlement agreement and the resulting court order.

The agreement and order can be found here. Captioned as an “Assurance of Discontinuance” (see Minn. Stat. § 8.31), the agreement and order together function as a consent decree.

Although several provisions of the agreement are interesting, perhaps most interesting is a stayed, conditional civil penalty:

MPHJ, including the MPHJ Subsidiaries and affiliates, represents and warrants that it has not received money from any Minnesota resident or entity for a patent license or an alleged infringement of a patent or patent rights. If, contrary to this representation and warranty, the State discovers Minnesota residents or Minnesota entities did pay MPHJ money for a patent license or for an alleged infringement of a patent or patent rights, then as penalty for violation of this Paragraph 4, MPHJ shall pay the State a civil penalty of $50,000 and refund all such money paid by Minnesota residents and entities.

The Assurance thus explains that MPHJ did not make any money from Minnesota residents in response to its demand letters.

Related cases in Vermont and Nebraska continue. Law360 reports that MPHJ removed the Vermont Attorney General’s litigation to federal court, and that the Attorney General is seeking to remand the case to state court. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Nebraska has granted a  preliminary injunction for the law firm that represents MPHJ, allowing it to continue litigating patent cases there The Nebraska Attorney General had sent the firm a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that the firm stop its patent-enforcement efforts. Patently O has more details here.