Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Feeds a Patent Troll
New submitter glebovitz writes "In case anyone missed the other Nokia news: on the same day they announced the sale of Qt to Digia, they also sold 500 patents to Vringo. Vringo, a video ring tone company, recently merged with patent portfolio company Innovate/Protect which includes Donald Stout, the founder of patent holding company NTP, on its board. Forbes refers to NTP as 'a patent troll which milked Research In Motion for $612.5 million in a patent infringement settlement reached in 2006.' As Eric Savitz writes in the article, 'Vringo decided to basically turn itself into a patent troll.'"
already in process - Vringo has settled part of a suit against AOL, but stands to receive as much as $1B from Google (that's not a misprint, it's widely estimated that damages could go as high as one billion US Dollars.) Trial starts around Oct 18th if memory serves
different lawsuit - Vringo has sued Google for patents owned from a previous merger not related to the Nokia patents... but it does support the idea of Vringo going after patent infringements for a primary source of revenue.