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World's Largest Patent Troll Fires First Salvo

Posted by kdawson on from the sleeping-under-the-world's-largest-bridge dept.

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Yesterday the biggest software patent troll of all finally woke from its slumbers: Intellectual Ventures filed patent infringement complaints in the US District Court of Delaware against companies in the software security, DRAM and Flash memory, and field-programmable gate array industries. Intellectual Ventures was co-founded by Microsoft's former CTO Nathan Myhrvold, with others from Intel and a Seattle-based law firm." We discussed IV's potential for patent trollery last spring.

1 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My question about IV... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Informative

    Will IV allow licensing of their patent portfolio, or will they do like a lot of companies, just get patents so nobody else can use them?

    Well, the original Slashdot article linked in TFS indicates that "it doesn't actually use these patents – except to threaten people with. In other words, Intellectual Ventures is a patent troll". They only license their patent portfolio. Expect this to basically be a shakedown.

    Man, I hate that a company can exist just to own patents and sue people.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.