Complaint Review: Brian Anderson

A long sordid story (See http://nthip.com/svn/suit/nth_eav.txt). The summary is that Brian conned me into spending close to $300K to buy an IP portfolio. He took a one third interest to bring the patents up to issued status so they could subsequently be resold.

It turned out that Brian had different ideas. He wanted to do a quick flip of the portfolio. When it turned out that he would actually have to do the work, he bailed.

I sent this (http://nthip.com/svn/suit/bar.txt) complaint to the state bar. Surprisingly to me, I received a one sentence response: "Regarding your allegations of fraud and malpractice, these are matters for the court, not the State Bar of Georgia."  Thanks guys. It's nice to know the bar is just part of the lawyers lobby.

My response to the bar is below:
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Dear Ms. Hulsey

Thank you for your December 16^th letter. I do hope it is not the final word on the subject of my grievance complaint against Brian Anderson. I realize that my earlier statement was rather long. I wanted to convey the full situation. Let me try a different approach. Instead of a full statement, Ill ask you to consider a subset of the facts that are clearly within the scope of the State Bar of Georgia.

If somebody hires a lawyer for a civil case and the lawyer doesnt show up in court which costs the client a default judgment, that is something the state bar should accept as a grievance and should invoke some kind of sanctions. How about a lawyer that does that 41 separate times?

Brian Anderson was hired to develop a patent portfolio of 41 patents and was paid over $120 thousand dollars to do so. I can produce a signed contract, canceled checks, and a witness statement, so this is a fact that is not likely to be disputed. The current status of the publically searchable applications in the portfolio is now Abandoned no response to office action. This can be checked at uspto.gov. See the status of applications 10/962840, 10/930878, 11/211844, etcetera. Not responding to an office action is the patent lawyer equivalent of not showing up in court.

I am bringing this to the state bar for two reasons:

1. 
   

   There is no effective remedy in civil court.

   
   
2. 
   

   If I am to have any chance at all of salvaging the abandoned applications with the patent office, I need to show that I am an innocent party.

I have taken my case to a couple of lawyers already. Brian has no malpractice insurance and few assets, so nobody Ive talked to is willing to take this case on contingency. If I go forward with the case, it would cost about $10K for depositions and another $50K for trial. Meanwhile, Brian can defend himself for free and would likely drag things out as long as possible. Even when I win a judgment, it is not likely to be worth much because of his lack of assets. Im afraid I dont have $60K to spend on a quixotic adventure like this; partially because the shyster in question has already ripped me off for over $250K. (Pardon me, Im a working stiff engineer and my retirement funds have been sacked.)

I can hire another lawyer and try to salvage some of the patents from the portfolio. My current understanding is that this is at the discretion of the patent office. They will only allow me to reclaim an abandoned application if I can show that it was abandoned through no fault of my own. To this end, I need something in the public record such as sanctions by the state bar showing that the lawyer did this on his own and without my authorization.