"Foley's culture of bad conduct"?

Joe Mullin quotes from an email of Erich Spangenberg, arising in the context of Foley & Lardner naming him as a third-party defendant in a dispute between patent-holding company DataTern and its former lawyers at Foley & Lardner:

"IPNav will be required to recount numerous instances—all supported by references—of Foley's culture of bad conduct, poor judgment, and nonchalance regarding professionalism, which contradict Foley's vastly overrated claims of superiority and excellent client service."

Mullin also writes:

In the IP Nav brief, Spangenberg sayss: "Foley's bad judgment here is typical, however—typical of Foley's bad decision-making that has it frequently in the news for all types of malfeasance, including sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, trademark abuse... legal malpractice—including revealing client confidences, and fraud."

There is much detail in the Mullin piece, which evaluates the accuracy of the allegations against Foley. Of some interest is the text:

Overall, Foley's complaint against Spangenberg portrays the firm as representing an operating entity in the Red Hat matter. That scenario, the firm argues, only turned into something with the typical markings of "patent troll" suit—keeping litigation costs low and ultimately settling for a figure in line with those costs—because of a major change of strategy by the patent-holders.

Hmmm, small inventors, who don't have deep pockets, also try to keep litigation costs low. Does that give them the "marking" of a troll?

Also on Mullin and Spangenberg:


Mullin's "Prior Art" blog tries to smoke Ebert

Also on Foley:


Sharon Barner of Foley named Deputy Director of USPTO