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Intellectual Ventures Tied To 1,300 Shell Companies
dgharmon writes "New research (PDF) shows that Intellectual Ventures is tied to at least 1,300 shell companies whose sole purpose is to coerce real companies into buying patent license that they don't want or need. Those who resist the 'patent trolls' are dragged into nightmarish lawsuits."
Patent trolling took off after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office began issuing a flood of questionable âoebusiness methodâ patents related to things like software and, believe it or not, a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In 2006, lawyers used such a patent to threaten Research in Motion with an injunction against the BlackBerry and extract a $612 million payout.
Well that's clearly why the BlackBerry has been having trouble in the market, RIM spent too much of their product development time working on sandwiches, and patent infringing sandwiches at that.
Blackberry is an obvious mistake. The crustless PB&J uses strawberry.
Anyway, why hasn't someone pointed out that Intellectual Ventures was founded by the ex-CTO of Microsoft Nathan Myhrvold and still partners with Microsoft on patent deals. Are all the MS haters asleep?
Also, see Judge Willian Alsup and Judge Richard Posner.
Yes, these two are amazing. Any judge who learns to program Java for a trial deserves credit.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."