The term to search for this is barratry and there are laws against it in some jurisdictions.
Realistically, you will not win a judgment on this to compensate you for your time dealing with a single cease and desist letter. If someone shows a really excessive pattern of it, perhaps a judge or a bar association could be convinced to make an example of them.
I guess that does address my concrete question as given.
But I think I was less imagining a countersuit that literally just "seeks damages for wasted time and effort"... and more imagining a countersuit that can somehow "rope in" the claims in the original suit, so as to force those claims to be evaluated and case law to be created upon that evaluation — whether the original claimant likes it or not.
Imagine, by analogy, outside the domain of IP law:
1. Party A threatens to sue party B for having violated the terms of some contract they have.
2. Party A then drops this threat.
3. Party B then sues party A with the intent of having a judge still evaluate that same question, but now in the other direction: "would party A have had legal standing to sue party B?" — where in the case that party B wins that judgement, this would not only award damages to party B, but also have the same case-law impact as if party A had really sued party B, and lost.
> As for your requests for information, or for action, directed to me: I
> would remind you that it is you, not I, who are making claims; and it
> is you, not I, who must substantiate those claims. You have not done so.
Which party would bear the burden of proof in step 3? Does it get reversed or stay as if the step 1 threat went to court?
So you basically want to give effect to any claim that isn't brought to court of being brought to Court? How does that make anything better? It's going to mean more lawsuits, a waste of judicial resources, and probably moot cases if it's not even adversarial. I understand this is a layman's perspective but it seems incredibly foresighted. You seem to be of the belief that it's never the case that parties, after investigations, etc, reasonably decide not to sue, and that they didn't prior have a reasonable basis for asserting their claims outside of a lawsuit? That's just naive.
Realistically, you will not win a judgment on this to compensate you for your time dealing with a single cease and desist letter. If someone shows a really excessive pattern of it, perhaps a judge or a bar association could be convinced to make an example of them.