For more than a decade, Shipping and Transit LLC (AKA Arrivalstar) has been aggressively pursuing dubious patent claims against public transit companies, shippers, and other businesses whose practices overlapped with Arrivalstar's absurd, obvious patents on using GPSes to figure out where stuff was.
Now, Shipping and Transit is bankrupt, and it has valued its portfolio of 34 patents at $1. It's the most honest moment in the company's shameful history.
Shipping and Transit is the poster-child for sloppiness at the US Patent and Trademark Office. The company owns a suite of patents for using GPS exactly as it was designed to work: to figure out where stuff is, and then to log and/or transmit that location. The people who filed these patents didn't invent GPS: they just took someone else's widely used invention and patented the most obvious way to use it. The US Patent and Trademark Office granted the patent, Shipping and Transit bought it, and then used it to harass and soak people who were making products and providing services (including city bus services!), while Shipping and Transit made nothing (except lawsuits).
Thankfully, there have been some changes in patent rules that have made it easier to get junk patents thrown out. After a couple of significant court losses in which Shipping and Transit was ordered to pay their victims' legal fees, and facing mounting debts, the company filed for bankruptcy.
Though the company made millions in settlements and "licenses" for its patent portfolio, it valued the portfolio at $1 in the bankruptcy. Read the rest
