This week’s spin of the Panel wheel landed imPaneled on a new proceeding that raises subject matter new to imPaneled.  Despite having been raised among the world’s foremost patent litigators (which they would happily tell you themselves), imPaneled has neglected the many patent cases on the Panel dockets–until now.

Some people would call Brandywine Communications Technologies, movant in the eponymous MDL 2462, In re Brandywine Communications Technologies, LLC, Patent Litigation, a “patent troll.” Brandywine precipitated MDL 2462 by filing 41 cases in 22 districts against DSL providers, alleging the infringement of six patents.  Now, imPaneled would never disparage anyone with an epithet as vile as “troll” (though we might use viler ones).  But it does bear mentioning that Brandywine is decidedly not in the DSL business.

imPaneled’s competitors (in a sense) at Thomson Reuters recently harkened back to 2011, when “conventional wisdom” was that the America Invents Act of 2011 would force patent trolls to the Panel in droves, which has not necessarily happened yet.  The good news is that the long-standing and ongoing battle between patent trolls and their alleged victims over joinder and venue issues raises the possibility that MDL 2462 could be particularly venomous by Panel standards.  imPaneled will be rooting for that.

* – imPaneled composed the title of this post with assistance only from this invaluable site–really–only to discover afterwards that everyone who has written about this subject has used the same title.  Sorry, imPaneled fans–sometimes you get what you pay for.