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Apple

Judge rules that Apple may not call a troll a troll

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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July 3, 2014, 10:59 AM ET

Honolulu-based GPNE Corp. has sued Apple (AAPL) for infringing some of the two dozen paging, packet radio and network patents it owns. The case has come before Lucy Koh, a U.S. district judge who knows the ways of Apple’s lawyers, having supervised three Apple v. Samsung jury trials.

In a pre-trial ruling issued last week — and brought to light Wednesday by GigaOm‘s Jeff John Roberts — she laid down some guidelines for this one.

In the course of the trial, the jury is not to hear Apple use the phrases

— patent troll
— pirate
— bounty hunter
— privateer
— bandit
— paper patent
— stick up
— shakedown
— playing the lawsuit lottery
— corporate shell game or
— a corporate shell

Apple may, however, refer to GPNE as a

— non-practicing entity
— licensing entity
— patent assertion entity
— company that doesn’t make anything or
— company that doesn’t sell anything

LINK: PRETRIAL ORDER RE: MOTIONS IN LIMINE

Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.

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By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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