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Re:Patent troll gives up, can’t defend “matchmaking” patent ... by ChuckMcM on Friday September 19, 2014 @05:13PM (#8342520)
Sadly no, it is not a crime. And it is nearly entirely the reason that one creates a legal entity (and LLC in this case) to "hold" the liability. The flip side is that it is also not a crime for someone to take a million dollars of someone elses money and spend it paying themselves and some friends a salary while building a web site devoted to cat pictures while buying a bunch of hardware on credit. Only to have the web site go bust. In both situations, monetary judgements can be levied only to have the entity "die" and take with it the liability it was holding.

The "win" here is that "do it on a computer" patents are being invalidated left and right by the courts and that is crimping the revenue stream of trolls and having them re-evaluate their portfolios.

Re:Patent troll gives up, can’t defend “matchmaking” patent ... by JoshTriplett on Friday September 19, 2014 @05:42PM (#8342646)
> Sadly no, it is not a crime.

That depends; it can be, if the owners of the LLC act in sufficiently bad faith. That's what "piercing the corporate veil" is about: when the owners of a company abuse the liability shield badly enough that they should be personally liable. Pulling money out in anticipation of a bankruptcy (as opposed to spending it in good faith as part of doing business) could potentially qualify for that.

Re:Patent troll gives up, can’t defend “matchmaking” patent ... by rdudek on Friday September 19, 2014 @05:56PM (#8342713)
That only applies if they still do something illegal. This generally applies to cases of money-laundering, drugs, criminal intentions. There would have to be a separate case initiated by the legal system.
Re:Patent troll gives up, can’t defend “matchmaking” patent ... by jgable on Friday September 19, 2014 @06:47PM (#8342891)
Not the case. Piercing the corporate veil depends on a number of factors that do not involve grossly illegal actions like you describe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Un...

Re:Patent troll gives up, can’t defend “matchmaking” patent ... by ohashi on Friday September 19, 2014 @05:41PM (#8342640)
But LLC's can be pierced under some circumstances. Why isn't this one of those circumstances?