How Life360 won its patent war



In May 2014, Life360 CEO Chris Hulls received an aggressive patent demand letter. The letter, from lawyers representing a company called Advanced Ground Information Systems (AGIS), told him he needed to pay for a "royalty-bearing license" to its four patents, or Life360 and its customers would have to "cease and desist" from infringement.

In other words: pay up, or shut down your company. The letter demanded a response within three days. Hulls wrote back:

Dear Piece of Shit,

 We are currently in the process of retaining counsel and investigating this matter. As a result, we will not be able to meet your Friday deadline. After reviewing this matter with our counsel, we will provide a prompt response.

 I will pray tonight that karma is real, and that you are its worthy recipient,

 Chris

On that Friday, Life360 got sued. The lawyers attached Hulls' "Dear Piece of Shit" letter as an exhibit.

What AGIS' lawyers could not have known is that they'd picked out one of the few small companies that wasn't going to back down from a patent fight—and Hulls wasn't going to play by the usual rules. Life360 was supposed to be their "easy" target. The lawyers, from a top IP law firm called Kenyon & Kenyon, had plans to hunt bigger game later—they had also sent (more nicely worded) patent threat letters to Google, Facebook, and Foursquare.

What Hulls couldn't have known is that in less than a year, he'd be in front of a jury, explaining his "Dear Piece of Shit" missive to an eight-person jury in faraway Florida. It wouldn't be easy. And AGIS was no typical "patent troll," but a small company that just hadn't managed to be profitable.

Still, he was in a unique position where he was ready and able to fight back. Life360 had just got a third round of funding, $50 million, and he had a board who would support him. When the company was younger and smaller, he'd had to pay off patent trolls—more than once. "If you have $3 million in the bank, can you really risk a suit that's going to be one million, when you could make it go away for $100,000?" he said in an interview with Ars. "Every time we wrote that check, my soul died a little bit." Hulls had worked for years with little or no salary. "Now, right when I'm finally starting to pay myself decently, I have this lawyer trying to steal from me," he said.

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