We're not talking about small-claims court here. Your profile says that you're an attorney; I would be absolutely stunned if any trial attorney would suggest that a pro se defendant could prevail in a patent lawsuit against a much more resourceful organization without any more experience than reading a book or two (let alone a "how to").
You would know as well as anyone that legal actions are more a game than an effort to determine who actually is right or wrong. The entity with the greater amount of money in the bank can afford attorneys who are better at playing the game; while everybody loves a good story of the self-taught layman winning a case, in reality most laymen would get absolutely screwed.
Certainly if it's a fight worth fighting -- if the patent dispute is that important to the victim's business -- then they should fight it as well as they can, especially since they would have so much riding on the outcome: potential grievous damages awarded to the plaintiff, for one.
And, this all presupposes that the layman is lucky enough to get a judge presiding over the case that has some competence in the area of expertise covered by the patent. If the suit is held in the East District Court of Texas, well, the defendant already has the odds stacked against them.
Even if the lawsuit doesn't go to trial, and gets settled like 96% of other such suits [1], the layman's ignorance of process could likely end up costing them far more in the settlement than they would spend on letters from a patent attorney's desk. The layman would be attempting to negotiate from a much weaker position, and the attorneys for the patent troll would know it.
I'm talking about "legal procedures" here, and the claim that ordinary people couldn't hope to follow them. They are pretty streamlined and easy to follow for a framework that must scale from small controversies to enormous ones. I think it's totally possible for an ordinary intelligent person (say an engineer) to pick up a couple of books and navigate that process. The judiciary goes to great lengths to ensure that, because it is very sensitive to the fact that a lawyer should not be necessary to defend yourself in court.
Now, would I recommend taking on a patent troll yourself? No, but that doesn't mean you couldn't do it, and even have a good chance if winning if the case is indeed totally meritless.
You would know as well as anyone that legal actions are more a game than an effort to determine who actually is right or wrong. The entity with the greater amount of money in the bank can afford attorneys who are better at playing the game; while everybody loves a good story of the self-taught layman winning a case, in reality most laymen would get absolutely screwed.
Certainly if it's a fight worth fighting -- if the patent dispute is that important to the victim's business -- then they should fight it as well as they can, especially since they would have so much riding on the outcome: potential grievous damages awarded to the plaintiff, for one.
And, this all presupposes that the layman is lucky enough to get a judge presiding over the case that has some competence in the area of expertise covered by the patent. If the suit is held in the East District Court of Texas, well, the defendant already has the odds stacked against them.
Even if the lawsuit doesn't go to trial, and gets settled like 96% of other such suits [1], the layman's ignorance of process could likely end up costing them far more in the settlement than they would spend on letters from a patent attorney's desk. The layman would be attempting to negotiate from a much weaker position, and the attorneys for the patent troll would know it.
[1]: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/06/02/what-to-do-sued-for-pat...