--- title: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll description: Cloudflare publicly announces it will fight a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Blackbird Technologies, a firm it characterizes as a dangerous new breed of... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-patent-troll-zh3gciadz twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll | daily.dev og:description: Cloudflare publicly announces it will fight a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Blackbird Technologies, a firm it characterizes as a dangerous new breed of... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-patent-troll-zh3gciadz og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/zH3GCiaDZ.png og:image:alt: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll **[Cloudflare](https://daily.dev/sources/cloudflare)** · 23 min read · 15 upvotes · 2 comments ## Summary Cloudflare publicly announces it will fight a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Blackbird Technologies, a firm it characterizes as a dangerous new breed of patent troll that combines a law firm and IP rights holder into one entity to minimize litigation costs. Cloudflare outlines a four-pronged response: vigorously contesting the lawsuit, funding a $50,000 crowdsourced prior art search to invalidate all Blackbird patents, investigating Blackbird's operations, and filing bar association complaints in Massachusetts and Illinois alleging violations of professional conduct rules. The post details why the asserted 1998 patent (US 6453335) has no relevance to Cloudflare's technology and argues Blackbird's business model may violate attorney ethics rules around acquiring proprietary interests in litigation and fee-sharing with non-lawyers. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What patent is Blackbird Technologies suing Cloudflare over? Blackbird Technologies is suing over US patent 6,453,335, filed in 1998, which describes monitoring a data channel and inserting error pages when transmission rates fall below a threshold. Blackbird purchased the patent from inventor Oliver Kaufmann in October 2016 for a nominal $1 plus undisclosed consideration, then sued Cloudflare and Fastly five months later. _Teams tracking patent risk in their tech stack follow disputes like this one on daily.dev._ ### What makes Blackbird Technologies different from a typical patent troll? Blackbird combines a law firm and a patent-holding entity into one organization, letting its own attorneys act as plaintiffs rather than hiring outside counsel, which removes legal fees from its cost structure. Founded by former patent-defense attorneys Wendy Verlander and Chris Freeman, it filed 107 lawsuits since September 2014, few reaching trial, suggesting a strategy built around nuisance settlements. _Developers and legal teams researching patent troll tactics can follow ongoing coverage on daily.dev._ ### How much money is Cloudflare offering for prior art to invalidate Blackbird's patents? Cloudflare pledged up to $50,000 total: up to $20,000 shared among contributors who supply the most useful prior art against the specific '335 patent asserted in its lawsuit, and up to $30,000 distributed among those who submit prior art on any of Blackbird's other 37 patents or applications, evaluated by outside patent counsel based on relevance and usefulness. _Anyone weighing how companies fund crowdsourced legal defenses can track these initiatives on daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@codechini** · 0 upvotes > That is crazy. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Flock and Cyble Inc. Weaponize "Cybercrime" Takedowns to Silence Critics](https://daily.dev/posts/flock-and-cyble-inc-weaponize-cybercrime-takedowns-to-silence-critics-td8led0mh) · Hacker News · 4 upvotes · 0 comments - [Standing up for the open Internet: why we appealed Italy’s "Piracy Shield" fine](https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-for-the-open-internet-why-we-appealed-italy-s-piracy-shield-fine-zkx7brskq) · Cloudflare · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Lightbringer raises $10M to replace patent firms with AI](https://daily.dev/posts/lightbringer-raises-10m-to-replace-patent-firms-with-ai-fykhph88t) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Developers still need the right to challenge junk patents](https://daily.dev/posts/developers-still-need-the-right-to-challenge-junk-patents-1yiosrnut) · GitHub Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#cloudflare](https://daily.dev/tags/cloudflare) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-patent-troll-zh3gciadz) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-patent-troll-zh3gciadz","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-patent-troll-zh3gciadz"},"datePublished":"2026-07-20T15:49:30.273Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T18:40:35.391Z","description":"Cloudflare publicly announces it will fight a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Blackbird Technologies, a firm it characterizes as a dangerous new breed of...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/93fce9f06b1188bfd5ae0dbc11556e70?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/93fce9f06b1188bfd5ae0dbc11556e70?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Cloudflare","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Cloudflare","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/38522e1d11354cd6b7af66f9d4316735","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/cloudflare"},"commentCount":2,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-patent-troll-zh3gciadz","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":15},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}],"keywords":"open-source,cloudflare","timeRequired":"PT23M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Cloudflare","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/cloudflare"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-patent-troll-zh3gciadz","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"That is crazy.","datePublished":"2026-07-22T04:05:03.633Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/zH3GCiaDZ#c-guIWjzLy0","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Chinmay","url":"https://daily.dev/codechini","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocIH2WsF8sgGFUn2cqwWEP7lShdb0sJtMm77hIQNvoUXN83IWMIo=s96-c"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-patent-troll-zh3gciadz#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What patent is Blackbird Technologies suing Cloudflare over?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Blackbird Technologies is suing over US patent 6,453,335, filed in 1998, which describes monitoring a data channel and inserting error pages when transmission rates fall below a threshold. 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