EARLIER TODAY WE HIGHLIGHTED THE LATEST report about Microsoft's patent troll, Intellectual Ventures.
Patent-hoarding giant Intellectual Ventures has long beat the drum that it doesn't file lawsuits.
But now Intellectual Ventures has started selling some of its 27,000 patents to people who aren't afraid to sue -- and in some cases IV will get a share of the prize. It's a scary scenario for tech companies that may end up in the legal crosshairs, but industry observers say it was only a matter of time.
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It's a new phase for Intellectual Ventures, which was founded in 2001 by Microsoft Corp.'s top tech guys, Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung. At first, the company took investments (about $5 billion) and bought up patents (now up to 27,000). In more recent years, IV has been cutting licensing deals with big tech companies that are apparently infringing on some of IV's intellectual property. Intuit Inc., the financial software firm, agreed to pay $120 million for a license in May. Detkin says that IV has brought in about $1 billion in revenue this way. And he and others at IV like to point out that they've never once used the cudgel of a patent infringement lawsuit to get a deal done.
With its new practice of selling off patents to third parties, litigation is much more likely. It's similar to the "catch and release" model used for some time by other patent-holding companies. That's a friendly sounding name for a threat that goes like this: Take a license because we're going to sell the patent on the open market -- and you never know what unscrupulous and lawsuit-prone troll is going to buy it.
In early 2004, Google's lawyers didn't have nearly enough to do. A patent on the design of Google's homepage (AKA its "[g]raphical user interface for a display screen of a communications terminal") that they applied for at that time was granted this week.
There are already concerns over the fact that software can be covered by both copyright and patents, but why not add trade dress to the mix? Via Michael Scott we learn that Fidelity is suing a competing company because its software looks like Fidelity's, and that the basic look and feel of Fidelity's software is protected by trade dress.
Comments
Yuhong Bao
2009-09-04 03:16:17
Here is another post on the Patently-O blog on Google and patent reform (the exact same blog that has the post that claimed that Google would be harmed if software patents were banned): http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/03/guest-post-patent-reform-needed-more-than-ever.html Also consider that as mentioned before Google don't use it's software patents offensively much if at all, let along would be harmed if it was banned. That blog even have a post on exactly this patent: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/09/googles-patent-on-its-googlecom-home-page.html
Roy Schestowitz
2009-09-04 07:18:11
That's what they all say (Red Hat included), but promises are not a legal contact and acquisitions/liquidations change everything.
Yuhong Bao
2009-09-10 05:17:19
Yuhong Bao
2009-09-04 03:02:10