Our competitors are never afraid to call a spade… a public interest group.

Law360 seems to have a pretty flexible definition of that term. Last month, it included Americans for Fair Patent Use. Who is so concerned about such fairness? That would be F&B LLP, the Texas law firm that owns Americans for Fair Patent Use, which is a limited liability company set up to prosecute a false marking lawsuit filed in East Texas on July 14. The suit, against Apple, Sprint, Samsung, and Verizon, alleges that various smartphones made by those companies have false patent marks.

Did AFPU magically transform into a “public interest” group because false marking is a qui tam action? Is it because the plaintiff has the word “fair” in it? Since the plaintiff’s name actually ends with “LLC” we’re at a loss as to how you spin this one.

Only Law360 used the term “public interest group” in its reporting. But—at the risk of sounding like we’re tooting our own horns here—could one of the many web publications that obsess over lawsuits against Apple have bothered to correctly name the plaintiff here? Not only is the law firm clearly named in the corporate disclosure document [PDF] filed the same day as the complaint, but F&B actually fesses up to its ownership of AFPU on the fourth page of the complaint itself [PDF].

As we’ve discussed in an earlier column, a majority of false marking suits are being filed by lawyers themselves, along with a few serial plaintiffs.

Photo via Wikimedia / Snek01