Image by: Opensource.com

On Friday, the Chinese tech media reported something that, to longtime observers of the US legal system, is probably unsurprising: Xiaomi is being sued. The culprit, according to the Beijing Times, is a “notorious patent troll” called Blue Spike LLC.

Patent trolls, if you’re not familiar with them, are companies and individuals that develop or acquire patents and then use them to sue other companies instead of using them to develop products. This has become a particular problem in the American tech industry because the US Patent Office has, over the past decade or two, accepted some very vague patents. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit dedicated to protecting civil liberties in the digital world, writes that “the US Patent Office, overwhelmed and underfunded, issues questionable patents every day.” Patent trolls are the companies that apply for or buy up these vague patents and then use them to sue tech companies offering products that use similar technology.

Are they trolling?

Whether or not Blue Spike is a patent troll is a matter of opinion. The company has said in the past that it is only defending its legal rights. (Tech in Asia contacted Blue Spike for comment on this story but did not receive a response). Its website does list a couple of products related to digital IP protection, and it claims to have been working in the industry for years. On the other hand, the company has filed well over 100 lawsuits since 2012, and it won the EFF’s “Stupid Patent of the Month Award” a year ago in a post that described one of Blue Spike’s patents as “nothing more than a nebulous wish list.”

Xiaomi’s Mi Note (left) next to the iPhone 6.

And although Blue Spike also has a Japan office, it is headquartered in East Texas, the epicenter for patent troll lawsuits. It files its suits in the same plaintiff-friendly Marshall, Texas court where a full 25 percent of US patent-related lawsuits are filed.

Loads of lawsuits

Xiaomi is the latest victim of a Blue Spike lawsuit, which alleges willful violation of Blue Spike’s patent related to (ironically enough) IP protection methods. Specifically, Blue Spike is saying that Xiaomi violates Blue Spike’s patents in the Mi 4, Mi 4 LTE, Mi 4c, Mi 4i, Mi 5, Mi 5 Plus, Mi Note Plus, Mi Note Pro, Redmi 1S, Redmi 2, Redmi 2 Prime, Redmi 2 Pro, Redmi 2A and Redmi Note 2. (Incidentally, not a single one of those products is currently sold in the United States, and three of them haven’t even been released anywhere yet). It also filed suit against Xiaomi once previously, alleging similar complaints in a 2013 case that has since been resolved.

Xiaomi declined to comment on this story.

Xiaomi isn’t the only Chinese tech company facing litigation from Blue Spike, though. Just a day before filing its suit against Xiaomi, Blue Spike also filed suit against Huawei for allegedly infringing on the same patent. Previously, it also sued both Huawei and Oppo in 2013, and it has filed litigation against a veritable who’s who of American tech and media firms including (deep breath): Texas Instruments, Facebook (three times), Shazam, Soundhound, Adobe (twice), Google (twice), Yahoo, CBS Interactive (twice), Clear Channel, and 3M Cogent, among many others. Japanese firms like Hitachi and Fujitsu have also been the target of Blue Spike lawsuits. And this is all just since 2012!

The lawsuit is unlikely to present any serious risk to Xiaomi – after all, Blue Spike’s previous suits have not derailed other big tech companies like Facebook – but as Chinese tech companies continue the trend of expanding into the US, they may find themselves increasingly the target of litigation in Blue Spike’s corner of Texas. Juries in Marshall are notoriously plaintiff-friendly in patent litigation, and Texas is reportedly one of the most racist states in the country, so Chinese companies may find that juries there aren’t particularly inclined to give them a break.