No Shortage of Litigation with Zilka & Kotab

To many of us, the names Dominic Kotab and Kevin Zilka do not ring a bell.  If you are part of a major corporation, however, those names may seem all too familiar.  Kotab and Zilka are patent lawyers who have been working in the law since the 1990’s.  They are principals of Zilka-Kotab P.C., and three patent-holding companies – Aloft Media, LLC; Azure Networks, LLC; and Stragent, LLC.

Within the past 9 months, Kotab and Zilka have filed 9 lawsuits against 20 companies, using 8 different patents.  They have already sued Microsoft 5 times, naming a total of 41 defendants.  Last week they filed a suit against Google, claiming that Google’s Chrome browser infringed on one of their patents. Google – which saw an 800% increase in patent litigation last year - is certainly a veteran when it comes to litigation, but companies may need to start to worrying about Kotab and Zilka.

Although the full list of suits filed by this duo are available at The Prior Art, here are some highlights from this past year:

• Feb. 22nd:  Aloft Media sues Microsoft twice in the same day.  Once over a patent which Zilka prosecuted for a client but bought in 2007, and once over a data networking idea used by MSN explorer.
• April 8th: Aloft sues nine companies, for allegedly infringing a patent they bought related to weather monitor systems.
• June 25th: Aloft sues Yahoo, AT&T, and AOL over a patent that was also asserted against Adobe and Microsoft.
• Sept 9th: Stragent sues Microsoft and Ford Motor Co., by claiming that Microsoft’s voice-activated media player infringes on a patent Zilka bought from Voice Demand in 2007.  It was issued in 2008, the same day the suit was filed.
• October 10th: Azure Network sues Nokia over two purchased patents.

Are these two patent trolls in disguise? Or just little guys taking on big corporations?