A Mohawk tribe in the state of New York is at the heart of a patent scandal. Companies sell their patents to the Native American tribe and pay for their own exclusive use. Allergan made the beginning, now Microsoft and Amazon are suffering.Native American tribes enjoy a high degree of legal autonomy in American law. In this field of law, patent rights cannot be revoked by special courts. In addition, Native American tribes in the United States enjoy immunity from patent litigation.
Native American tribe sued Microsoft and Amazon
The hardware company SRC Labs had transferred about 40 patents to the Native American tribe in August of this year. It is piquant that these patents are, according to the U. S. American television broadcaster CNBC was about
to lose its protection status, classified as trivial patents, i. e. patents that are only granted a low level of invention. SRC Labs is a manufacturer of reconfigurable computers and a provider of servers, workstations and embedded systems.
