Cloudflare committed $100K in bounties to “hamstring” another patent troll. //

In a blog post, Cloudflare announced that its most recent victory—defeating a lawsuit filed by Sable IP and Sable Networks in 2021—was largely thanks to participants of Project Jengo. Launched in 2017, Cloudflare's program offers tens of thousands of dollars in awards to activate an army of bounty seekers and crowdsource submissions of evidence—known as "prior art"—that can be used to overcome frivolous patent claims or even invalidate patents that never should have been issued.

To find prior art, Project Jengo participants comb through academic papers, technical websites, and patent documents, helping Cloudflare explain in detailed petitions to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) why certain patents should be invalidated. //

In court, pointing to prior art and sharing a Cloudflare engineer's expertise, the Cloudflare legal team broke down for the jury "the many reasons why" Sable's patent "does not describe anything that Cloudflare actually does."

It took a jury two hours to decide that Cloudflare was right, not just dismissing Sable's claims but invalidating Sable's patent permanently because prior art showed that "Sable’s patent covered, at best, only technology that had already been described by inventors at Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies—leading routing technology companies at the time."

So far, Cloudflare has awarded $70,000 to Project Jengo participants who helped the company defeat Sable. According to Cloudflare's blog, the company will announce the final $30,000 in awards after the "official conclusion of the case." //

Project Jengo's first success came in 2019 when Cloudflare defeated Blackbird Technologies. As a result of that victory, Blackbird "went out of business," effectively ending that company's meritless patent infringement claims, Cloudflare said. Now, Cloudflare has "invalidated significant parts of three Sable patents, hamstringing their ability to bring lawsuits against other companies," Cloudflare said.