The Project Jengo Saga: How Cloudflare Stood up to a Patent Troll – and Won!

In 2016, Blackbird Technologies, a boutique law firm known for patent litigation, acquired an incredibly broad software patent with the ambiguous title "PROVIDING AN INTERNET THIRD PARTY DATA CHANNEL." Later that year, they decided to assert this patent against Cloudflare. In response, Cloudflare launched Project Jengo, a plan designed to remove the economic asymmetry from patent litigation and make patent trolls rethink their tactics. Through vigorous legal defense, crowdsourced prior art submissions, and ethics complaints against Blackbird's co-founders, Cloudflare managed to win decisively in court and ultimately shut down Project Jengo as the case was resolved. The impact of this project has been significant, with Blackbird filing fewer cases since its launch and operating with fewer resources than before.