Intellectual Ventures

Intellectual Ventures, a patent troll that similarly applies and purchases patents and sue product developers for royalties. An article in 2012 said they maybe the largest worldwide patent holder. This troll is a little different in that they themselves not only purchase patents for their own use and launch lawsuits, but also sell them to other smaller trolls. They have launched lawsuits against companies in software security, DRAM and flash memory, and FPGA. In total it’s believed that they have made around 2 billion dollars from licensing and acquiring patents to and from these large companies. There is a well-written article I have posted below that describes how often times the party suing and being sued develop a “cozy relationship” to mutually benefit from, which may lead us to revaluate our views on big corporations and the true meaning of intellectual property.

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/12/09/intellectual-ventures-becomes-patent-troll-public-enemy-1/id=13711/

Digitude Innovations

Digitude Innovations is also listed as one of these patent trolls. If you search online you can find articles relating to Digitude Innovations in cahoots with Apple. One such article title was “Apple Made a Deal With The Devil (No, Worse: A Patent Troll)”. The article states how Apple sold its patents to Digitude Innovations to do its dirty work for them. In a sense instead of Apple telling its employees to find companies or users that infringe their patents, they simply sold them to a patent troll that specializes in that task.

Acacia Research Corporation

Acacia Research Corporation sued Red Hat and Novell for the infringement of three software patents.

An example of one of these patents was U.S. 5072412 – User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects. The claims include a linking data structure that links the first workspace to the display and a second data structure to the first workspace and so on. Similar to iOS multiple desktops if you have a MAC.

The court ruled that the patents were not only not infringed upon but also invalid. Even though many of may not have heard of Red Hat and Novell, Acacia successfully sued Apple for infringing its patent portfolio and Apple paid the licensing fees.

NTP vs RIM

NTP, a patent holding company, or as we know NPE, sued Research In Motion Ltd for patent infringement. Research in Motion is known to be the maker of Blackberry. This dispute was settled for $612.5M because RIM investors and customers explained that continued business is far more important than one lawsuit. After this dispute the USPTO reviewed the questionable patents of NTP and invalidated or nullified some of them. However, even though this is preventative for the future, I don’t find it fair that RIM ltd still had to pay. Arstechnia, an online forum and site for technology believes NTP is currently attempting to target large mobile phone makers and their allies such as Nokkia, AT&T, and others. Many patent trolls are though to simply target small companies and startups, but here we see that they also target the largest companies in their industry if they can as they would make more money from them.

NPE Implications

As discussed previously, patent trolls essentially extort money out of companies by claiming infringement upon vague patents owned by the troll. As patent litigation is incredibly expensive, sometimes millions of dollars and take months to years, most parties that are threatened will simply choose to pay the licensing fee rather than go to court. This decision is made because many small upcoming business are targeted, who cannot afford to go to court, but also do not have the resources, manpower, or time to combat this threat. Depending on the patent that is supposedly infringed upon, the licensing fee can be anywhere from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars but on average is a few thousand. Either ways, this is still much less to pay than millions in court, which would also bring negative publicity towards the company.

NPE

A patent troll, or non-practicing entity, defined by Wikipedia is a person or company who enforces patent rights against accused infringers in an attempt to collect licensing fees. The person does not manufacture or supply services with regard to those patents under question. Or in other words, a non-practicing entity holds a patent for a product or process, but has no intention of developing it. A patent troll, discussed below, is a type of non-practicing entity.

Essentially, a patent troll attempts to weaponize patents by purchasing cheap broad patents and threatening litigation upon those that infringe their patents. These threats include sever legal action, often time in court unless a hefty licensing fee is paid for infringing the patent.

I believe one of the keys to patent trolling is how broad and vague most of the NPE patents are. Due to the ambiguity of these patents, NPE’s can find most companies vulnerable, especially those small startups.

I found most of the material on this website. Feel free to visit to find out more.

https://www.eff.org/issues/resources-patent-troll-victims