

Giant Patent Troll Awakened: Intellectual Ventures Files Its First Lawsuits - yanw
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/11073712190/intellectual-ventures-files-its-first-lawsuits-giant-patent-troll-awakened.shtml

======
retube
IV is reviewed with some reverence in SuperFreakonomics. If I remember
correctly Bill Gates is an investor. They're portrayed as a fabulously noble
corporation, populated with the bright and best selflessly attempting to solve
some of the world's most pressing issues - climate change, hurricanes and so
on. Whether true or not I don't know, but it's disheartening to hear they're
actually just a huge patent troll. Leaves a sour taste in my mouth re
superfreakomics too.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I was reading superfreakonomics in the store, really enjoying it, until I got
to the chapter about IV, and walked out in disgust. I'm sure the massive
bribes they got form Myhrvold will overcome their lost sales, though.

~~~
ced
Why would IV bribe them? In fact, why would a patent troll care about PR _at
all_? Does a good reputation help in court?

I'm also going to invoke Hanlon's razor, in "defense" of the freakonomics
guys.

~~~
bryanlarsen
IV cares a great deal about its reputation, and have gone to great lengths to
avoid the label of "patent troll". This story is remarkable because it's the
first time that IV has actually directly filed a lawsuit rather than going
through intermediaries to avoid sullying their own name.

They've also spent a large amount of money on lobbyists. Compared to that
expense, bribing the superfreakonomics would be cheap and effective. I doubt
it was a direct bribe, rather an indirect bribe (wining & dining & all
expenses paid vacation to "visit" them).

------
kvs
Here is a list of patents and industry vendors sued:
[http://intellectualventures.com/Libraries/Article_Reprints/F...](http://intellectualventures.com/Libraries/Article_Reprints/Fact_Sheet.sflb.ashx)

~~~
jdp23
I looked at a couple of the security patents, where they're suing Symantec,
Trend Micro, McAfee, and Checkpoint. These certainly seem to be acquisition
rather than IV-developed ideas. So the methodology here (buy up undervalued
patents and sue big companies) looks trollish to me.

------
tzs
That was kind of a dumb article. There are many business reasons a company
with a patent might transfer the patent into a subsidiary company other than
trying to keep people from knowing it is yours. For instance if you are
generating revenue from a patent by licensing, having the patent in the hands
of a subsidiary would make it easier if you someday wanted to sell the patent.
You could instead of directly selling the patent just sell the subsidiary.
Your licensees then keep sending their royalty checks to the same company, and
the contracts don't have to be updated to specify a new name, and so on.

If you transfer a patent to a subsidiary just to hide your involvement in a
lawsuit, that is unlikely to even work. When people see that FooCorp is suing
over patent #NNNNNNN, and FooCorp is a new corporation and the patent was
assigned to IV up until shortly before FooCorp acquired it, it does not take a
genius to figure out that FooCorp is almost certainly an IV subsidiary.

So, an accurate story would be something like: "IV has sued several companies
over patents before. They are now suing some more companies. Probably
meaningless trivia--this time they didn't make a subsidiary to deal with the
suit".

I remain unimpressed with Techdirt.

------
jerf
I followed the links down to the putative patent they are attacking the
security companies with. It's 5987610: [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5987610.PN.&OS=PN/5987610&RS=PN/5987610)

From what I can see, the patent is adequately summarized as "Virus scanning,
only with a phone line involved".

------
T_S_
I doubt they were ever asleep. Just executing a ling-term strategy.

