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We went to the soft opening at BJ’s Restaurant for lunch yesterday

February 24th, 2011

BJ's Restaurant in Tyler
BJ's restaurant Tyler TXThe soft opening we went to was yesterday at 1:40 for lunch. They were booked up for almost all other times.

I got the Sweet Pig pizza which is like a deep dish gourmet canadian bacon pizza with really good seasoned tomatoes on top.

I loved my pizza as well as what they call their “hand crafted” root beer. I could have gotten a beer instead but I was just not up to it and root beer sounded great.

BJ’s restaurant is known as being a beer brewery but since Tyler is in the dry county of Smith we have to settle with getting the beer imported from Dallas Texas.

Good old Dallas import beer, nothing wrong with that. My wife got the chicken sesame salad or something to that effect and she liked it. She said her salad was light and just the right amount of taste.

The salads are not loaded down with ranch dressing so I think if you are trying to lose weight you will pleased with this.

For desert we had this cookie with icecream that was cooked in a small pan.

The desert was very good as well and overall I would give BJ’s a 5 star rating for the city of Tyler.

You will find the overall experience far and above better than what you see, hear and taste at Applebees, Chili’s, and the Olive Garden.

I hear to open a BJ’s restaurant you need to have like 6 million dollars just hanging out in a bank account not being used. The 6 million doesn’t include the type of capital investment required to buy the land, build the BJ’s and run payroll.

The guy who bought the BJ’s franchise in Tyler is a smart cookie when it comes to running restaurants and he in fact owns several.

The owner also owns the Wing Stops and Smashburgers in town.

I like BJ’s restaurant and will probably eat there a lot. I also happen to like Smashburger and Wing Stop quite a bit. I think this guy is on to something.

Tyler School Bond Vote

November 2nd, 2010
Tyler Texas School Bond Vote

School Bond Vote Tyler TX

Update: Most of the vote is in for the Tyler school bond with 50.14% voting No! and 49.86% voting Yes

It’s down to only 71 votes at this time. That’s close!

As of 1 hour ago the Tyler Texas school bond was 406 votes behind from passing.

If this trend continues we forecast that the Tyler TX 140 million dollar school bond will not pass this October 2010 election.

The Tyler Texas school bond vote allows that good side of people to come out so they can say they did something, “for the children”.

Who doesn’t like children? I have a 2 year old son and another baby boy on the way. The problem with the Tyler TX school bond is we already had an 80 million school bond voted and approved that was afterwards determined to not be enough in 5 years as schools would once again be over capacity.

So now we have a Tyler school bond over 145 million dollars. When a group of concerned citizens with the Tea Party with no political aspirations for themselves asked some very pertinent questions regarding the school bond they were put off.

The Tyler Texas Tea Party’s questions were continuosly put off and the professional politicians acted on the news as if they did answer the Tea Party’s questions.

This type of political question dodging is why America is voting out the Democrats. American’s want honest politicians in government.

By TISD officials not answering the Grass Roots America We The People Tea Party’s questions and yet saying they have is down right dishonest and is what many local citizens hate so much about politics and politicians.

It is important to point out that Grass Roots America isn’t against the children or new schools they just need TISD to get the school bond right this time. Once they have a solid plan in place and have answered the voters questions it would be appropriate to proceed with the school bond.

Unfortunately voters often hear, “for the children” and vote “Yes” considering it their good deed for the year.

I’m hoping the school bond doesn’t pass simply so the career politicians with the TISD will take voters seriously and no longer think that “for the children” will work on voters.

Why can’t the TISD officials really answer these hard questions from the Tea Party and quit playing politics? What are ya’ll trying to hide?

You are lying in the faces of regular ole’ average Joe voters rather than serving the public and answering unpopular hard questions.

We will find out tonight if the 140 million dollar school bond passes tonight. If so more really nice schools will be built in Tyler but how long until their capacity is reached? Doesn’t it make sense to to do this right the first time?

Apple Given a Patent Lawsuit Penalty of $625.5 million dollars by a Tyler Texas Federal Jury

October 6th, 2010
Apple Patent Infringement Case Tyler Texas

Apple

As we have been writing about over the last several months, Tyler and East Texas are considered dumb hillbilly areas that offer large advantages for patent trolls to file patent infringement lawsuits and win.

Just a few months ago VirnetX of Tyler won $106 million against Microsoft so this is not at all uncommon around here.

Click here to contact a patent law attorney

It was reported today that a federal jury in Tyler Texas awarded a company located in Tyler Texas by the name of Mirror Worlds LLC $625.5 million dollars as a judgement against Apple for infringing on their patents.

Of course if they really did do something wrong they should have to pay some type of penalty. What is often the case with patent outfits like this is to find that the company is simply a patent clearing house. The company buys up patents with the sole motive being to find large companies infringing on the patent and profit from lawsuits. Often a company like this hasn’t a single physical product they actually sell.

An example would be to where a patent company buys up some patents that they already know are being infringed upon with the express purpose of making income through litigation. These patent trolls do not wish to make something with the patent they bought but are looking to sue as many large corporations as they can.

You must also consider that it is not all bad what the patent troll is doing as some engineers and scientists that have made these patents contractually sell their patents to large patent companies like this to basically handle the litigation for them. So in a way these patent clearing houses offer a service to legitimate inventors of a product, software, or service that may or may not have ever been developed.

This patent trolling makes millions and millions of dollars for these companies as well as their lawyers. Not only does the patent troll need to open up a business in Tyler or East Texas to pursue litigation here but their lawyer must be local counsel.

Click here to contact a patent law attorney

Although there will likely be a larger law firm outside of Tyler and possibly in another state working on the case they will retain local counsel here to pursue the matter in court.

There were 3 patents involved in this court case that Mirror Worlds LLC claim Apple infringed on. This comes out to $208.5 million per violation. Apple calls this lawsuit “triple dipping” if they actually collect all the 3 penalties.

The case is being appealed by Apple and will likely have some of the infringements and penalty’s knocked down and reduced but will still leave the patent troll company with millions of dollars for both themselves and their lawyers.

Once again Tyler Texas jury’s have proven to be gullible hillbilly idiots. My best guess is that most of the jury simply do not understand the complexities of the technological patents being discussed in court and are lulled into believing the patent trolls sob story.

The patents in the dispute were created by Yale professor David Gerlenter. David spun off Mirror Worlds Technologies from the university in 1996 and files the patents in 1999.

I imagine that the current Mirror Worlds LLC entity is no longer owned by the original patent owner, David Gerlenter but was bought by a patent troll. The patent troll than opened up an office in Tyler Texas in order to be able to sue from Tyler Texas so the lawsuit would be decided by an East Texas jury.

Patent Trolling East Texas

Patent Troll

By having patent litigation decided by a Tyler or East Texas judge and jury it is almost a guaranteed win for the patent troll company which is why I suspect Mirror World LLC opened up an office in Tyler Texas.

U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis is considering Apple’s request at this time that Apple does not infringe at least 2 of these patents. He will likely grant this request and lower the penalty amounts on at least 2 of the 3 infringement penalties.

Click here to contact a patent law attorney

The judge will soon hear arguments now on the damages awarded in the case from both sides

Patent Trolling: Abusing The System?

Patent lawyers have taken over the patent trolling industry in a new way by going from an attorney who helps patent holders defend against other companies who are suing them in regards to an infringed patent to these same lawyers buying large swaths of patents themselves and suing companies. You see no one is in a better position to know just how lucrative it is to sue companies that are infringing on patents then the patent litigation attorneys who have both defended and fought and won many of these cases for other companies.

You would think an attorney that worked in the patent infringement industry and has seen all the abuse in this issue would work to reform the industry. This however is not the case and quite a few attorneys that have won and lost some very big patent infringement cases are trying to make revenue themselves by being patent owners. Kind of sounds like the old saying,  “if you can’t beat them join them”, to me.

If you think about it owning a patent is like owning a business and in this case an attorney fighting for these businesses is just an employee who makes a meager amount compared to the patent owning company or the large corporation fighting the lawsuit. The amount of money gets up into the hundreds of millions of dollars so for many this type of power and money is a legacy creating game changer.

Take Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards who was a mesothelioma cancer attorney. His law firm sued very large companies like Corning and others where workers were contaminated by asbestos created products. His law firm made hundreds of millions of dollars and he became wealthy in the process. He eventually became a senator for North Carolina. Coincidentally the Corning plant was an east Texas manufacturing company that was the main culprit in the asbestos poisoning of their workers.

Some of these patent attorneys that once defended companies against claims of infringements by the plaintiffs in a lawsuit are now also buying patents and going after several companies they may have once defended in the past. Considering this attorney will likely make several hundred million dollars in his lawsuits some would say that money has gotten the better of him. I don’t see how this type of thing should be allowed to continue as this would be an obvious and blatant abuse of the patent laws in the United States.

One of these attorneys that has gone from defending litigants to being a plaintiff has bought up over 4,500 patents from a company that makes computer-memory chips. He also has a new law firm that works along side his patent owning company in pursuing litigation against any and all companies that have infringed these patents.

It seems a bit hypocritical to go from defending many of these companies to suing them but hey what do I know I am not an attorney and I will probably never own a patent.

Redbox Being Challenged By The Movie Studios

December 16th, 2009

Redbox is suing 21st Century Fox and Universal Studios for telling Redbox to wait a few weeks after their movies go on sell before renting them. In the past the studios had attempted to prevent movie rental stores from even starting. This attack against Red Box seems like another attempt by the movie studios to prevent a movie rental business model from developing.

The Redbox movie rental boxes in Walmart actually help the movie studios considering Redbox users rent about 20% more movies then other more traditional movie rental stores. Redbox has sold more then 77 million dollars in DVD’s through their boxes from users who have decided to keep the DVD rather then return it. All in all a case can be made that Redbox is really helping the movie studios rather then hurting them.

Since Redbox is a new business model the movie studios are just unsure about how it will effect their bottom line. The fact is Redbox is increasing volume, providing savings back to the consumer and offering a more convenient way to rent movies. Over the next few years Redbox will be helping the movie studios rather than hurting them as they offer a more effecient way to purchase and rent movies.

The movie studios like any major cash cow business becomes stuck in the familiar old school ways of doing business and are uncomfortable venturing out and trying something new to increase sales. They see Redbox making all this movie money and they feel that Redbox is shaving profit margin from new DVD sales. The fact of the matter is that Redbox stepped up and provided a more affordable and convenient way to shop and rent DVD’s by paying a dollar a day from convenient Walmart red boxes.

I have bought atleast one Redbox DVD simply because I never returned it. I have rented more movies that I would have never rented before because of the convenience of Redbox and I enjoy the limited but good selection of top dvd rentals. I end up spending an hour or two in a DVD movie rental store but only about 5 minutes searching for a movie rental using Redbox.

The movie studios need to leave those little Redbox movie rental boxes in the Tyler Texas Walmarts alone. We Tylerites like our Redbox, they’re good for me.