The more interesting question is, who's going to pay the rent throughout the course of the litigation? The company doesn't appear to have enough cash to cover its operating expenses.

I say Toyota should just ask one of their dealers to give them some free office space.

Good God! Their GROSS revenue for the three month period ending 9/30/05 was $4k!

3 months and a total of 4 thousand bucks in gross revenue? Why does anyone there bother to show up at work? What the heck? Shouldn't they be having SALES meetings rather than SUE meetings?

Well, yes, that's patently obvious (no pun, er, whatever) from their financials. But trying to generate revenue to stay afloat from, of all things, IP litigation is absurd.

I mean, they'd be better off suing their landlord claiming ceiling tiles fell on their execs (they could manufacture this merely by removing the tiles, punching large holes in the center of each, placing a tile over the heads of a few execs, and then calling 911) or having their execs wait in the likes of a Safeway or Walmart for the pimple-faced kid to mop the floor and then, when no one is looking, pick a nice, big wet spot in which to lie down. They'd certainly get a faster, albeit smaller, settlement......."I guarantee".

A British company filing suit in Germany? What's all this then?:

Solomon brought suit against Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. and Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, on September 12, 2005, claiming infringement of a number of claims in Solomon's patent number 5,067,932, primarily relating to Toyota's use of the technology in its Prius and Highlander Hybrid vehicles.

Re "deeper pockets", that just means the ability to hire more and better lawyers to me. :lol:

Really, for God's sake! I think the moment a company develops and markets an innovative and profitable product, scavenger services show up and start banging down the doors.

Not saying these companies fall within the parameters outlined above, but the likes of Intel, Apple, Microsoft, and Sony have been prime targets, some claims were warranted and a lot, well, weren't.

One of the goofier examples that comes to mind involves the electronic trading platform developed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. After its success went well beyond anyone's expectations, some nice lady claimed she had "developed" a similar platform and, like Solomon, started looking to get paid. Of course, she did have something "on file" with the USPTO but, as it turned out, was not much more than an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper stating something on the order of, '...a trading platform using a centralized computer for trading futures contracts where buyers are matched with sellers and vice versa...'. Sheesh!