$400 Million IP Experiment Making Some Nervous

BrianWCarver writes "IP Law & Business shines the spotlight on Intellectual Ventures, the IP start-up founded in 2000 by former Microsoft chief technologist Nathan Myhrvold. According to some estimates, Intellectual Ventures has amassed 3,000-5,000 patents, with the help of a $400 million investment from some of the biggest technology companies, including Nokia, Intel, Apple, Sony, and Microsoft. As the patent stockpile grows, so does the speculation--and the fear. IP lawyers and tech executives worry that Intellectual Ventures is less interested in changing the world with big ideas, and more focused on becoming an über patent troll, wreaking litigation havoc across industries with its patents."

Comments

net here!

[xlyz]

not in the EU, as software patent are (still) not allowed :)

Open Source comanies are doing basically the same

[Vitriolix]

http://lwn.net/Articles/179597/

Back in January, Red Hat reversed a longstanding policy and allowed the Mono .NET implementation into the Fedora distribution. A set of Mono applications (Tomboy, Banshee, F-spot) also went in at that time. The move was generally welcomed, but a number of observers wondered what had changed to make the addition of Mono possible. The sticking point had been a set of patents on .NET held by Microsoft; presumably those patents were no longer seen as a threat. But no information on why that might be was released at that time.

We missed it at the time, but Fedora hacker Greg DeKoenigsberg posted an explanation in late March. The answer, as it turns out, may offer some clues of how the software patent battle might play out.

Back in November, the Open Invention Network (OIN) announced its existence. OIN is a corporation which has been set up for one express purpose: to acquire patents and use them to promote and defend free software. The OIN patent policy is this:

Patents owned by Open Invention Network will be available on a royalty-free basis to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux operating system or certain Linux-related applications.

The list of "certain Linux-related applications" is said to exist, though it has not, yet, been posted publicly. But Mono is apparently on that list. So anybody who files patent infringement suits against Mono users, and who is, in turn, making use of technology covered by OIN's patents is setting himself up for a countersuit. Depending on the value of the patents held by OIN, that threat could raise the risk of attacking Mono considerably.

That is incorrect.

[reality-bytes]

The UKPTO is one of EU member offices known to actively *reject* attempted software and business method patents even if it has to go all the way to the high court.

In fact, they were recently held as a 'good example' by the FFII.