I recently wrote an article and also a blog post about Chicago plaintiffs’ lawyer Raymond P. Niro’s efforts to unmask the anonymous author of the Patent Troll Tracker blog with his offer of a $10,000 reward. Well, it worked. On Saturday, the blog’s author unmasked himself as Rick Frenkel, a lawyer who works inhouse at Cisco. He unmasked himself, he explained in this post, only after his hand was forced:

“I got an anonymous email, from the guy who probably collected the bounty, telling me I better tell everyone who I am (and he clearly knew), or else he would take care of it for me. The clear threat in the email is that he would do it in a way I wouldn’t be happy about. I don’t know what that means, but as I have been growing weary of anonymity anyway, here I am.”

He blogged anonymously, he says, to avoid publicity and the threat of retaliatory lawsuits. Now that the cat is out of the bag, he is undecided about continuing his blog, but is leaning towards keeping it going. As for whether anyone collected Niro’s bounty, he says he may never know and doesn’t care.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.