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Kodak Patents Sold for $525 Million
An anonymous reader writes "Intellectual Ventures and RPX Rational Patent, two companies frequently referred to as patent trolls, have snapped up the troubled Kodak company's imaging patents. Bloomberg reports that Kodak has agreed to sell the patent portfolio for $525 million, despite previous valuations of over $2 billion."
New submitter speedplane adds "How many stories have we read hating on the biggest patent troll of them all? Finally we see Intellectual Ventures making their case in a Wired op-ed, filled with everything you would would expect from a company suing the tech world on thousands of dubious patents: '...the system needs intermediaries within the market — companies like Intellectual Ventures — to help sift through and navigate the published landscape. By developing focused expertise, these patent licensing entities and intermediaries can function as patent aggregators, assembling portfolios of relevant inventions and providing access through licensing.' And my favorite gem: 'Ultimately, the users of those products — you — are the ones who benefit.'"
IV is just taking money from someone to buy them up and license them out to the investors
i've read that apple and google were going to jointly buy these. chances are that they just gave money to IV just to have a neutral third party hold them
i read the article and 12 companies are fronting the money for this with the ownership split between 2 holding companies
apple, google, facebook, and others are the ones buying up the patents. IV and RPX are just the holding companies to avoid nasty lawsuits about licensing terms
The complexity, and getting-sued risk, of tech patents are just so high that we need good, honest, businessmen like Intellectual Ventures to help us sort it all out for a small fee...
Seriously, you know that you are a morally bankrupt fucker when you are the one making that argument in your favor. Sure, in countries with shitty regulatory environments and 'rule of law' that exists largely as a punchline, you have a class of professional 'fixers', who know how to make things happen when provided with a suitable supply of grease for the correct palms, along with a supply of thugs to which you can pay for 'protection' to ensure that bad things don't happen. Those, though, at least have the decency to keep their mouths shut, and recognize that they are a symptom of a sick, dysfunctional system. IV has the audacity to argue that needing to hire a fixer and pay protection money for the privilege of selling a product without being nuked into a smoking crater is a good thing. Where is the osteosarcoma fairy when we need her?
when greed wins. What has the world come to when we openly reward those who thrive on preventing anyone from benefiting from human progress unless they themselves can derive unearned profit from it?
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
What Intellectual Ventures is trying to do (as they suggest) is create a patent environment where at least the relevant property can be bought/sold for proper licensing purposes. Consider instead the model where the Apples or Microsofts of the world hold patents and refuse to license (or do so reluctantly and at an extorted price) and ask yourself which you prefer. If reform isn't coming (and no signs would suggest that it is) then this might be the lesser of two evils.
Or maybe not, who knows.
Patents are temporary monopolies / permission slips granted by the governments. Some of you out there like the government because you like having to deal with only one thug. People bitching about IV are hating the player, not the game.
In a truly free society, government wouldn't exist, and companies like IV wouldn't exist either. Both are provably unnecessary, and create higher prices for all.
I have been threatened by a patent troll, Acacia Research Group, several times. They didn't invent CDROMs or HTML, but they acquired a patent for putting HTML on a CDROM. They threatened to sue me for doing the same. I was doing it before the date of their patent, so I figured I had prior art. So I decided on the following course of action: do nothing. I filed their letter, and ignored them. A few months later they sent me a more threatening letter. I ignored that one too.
Several years later, I received another letter from them about another dubious patent they claimed I was violating. I wasn't, and figured they were just fishing, so I ignored that letter too.
Then, years after that I received another threatening letter about the original "HTML on CDROM" patent. This was after the KSR International v Teleflex Supreme Court ruling that invalidated these kinds of "combination" patents. So again I decided to just ignore them. I never heard from them again.
So if you are threatened by a patent troll, my recommendation for an initial response , is to just ignore them. My experience is that works 100% of them time, but YMMV. They probably have no reason to believe you are actually violating their patents, are are just shotgunning letters out to a long list of target companies, in the hopes that there are some dufuses that will just roll over a offer to settle. If everyone ignores them are much as possible, and impedes their attempts to extort, then their business model falls apart.
For only $550M, why didn't Google buy the patents? That's pocket change for them (even for Sergey personally), and I'm sure Android infringes on one or more of the patents. Google could indemnify all Android manufacturers and software developers.
My mistake. I thought it read "Intellectual Vultures". Sorry
At some point this patent silliness has to end. Patent troll companies are hoping that it will last long enough to make a quick buck, and this is what is clearly driving the value of some patent portfolios. One thing that used to happen is that someone with an idea would sell it to someone else who could monetize it. This might seem unfair, I mean the inventor of the bar code did not get rich, but neither did he do the work to market it to the point where it was really valuable. In the current situation we have people sitting on ideas waiting for someone else to create a product that uses the idea so the product manufacturer can be sued. I don't know if this is the best way to innovate.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Patent law is intended (If you accept the original reading approach to the constitution) to promote the growth of the arts by ensuring that the inventor had, for a limited time, the exclusive rights to his creation. However, for copyright, that's now "until hell freezes over" and for patents it's "... on a mobile device"
While there is no doubt SOME benefit to having a "secondary market" for patents when the primary user ceases to exist, and while there is SOME benefit to having "patent experts" who "know the landscape," the current state of affairs is way out of balance.
When patents - whether owned by a practicing entity or not - deter advancements in the useful arts rather than promoting it, the patents in question and possibly the entire patent system has exceeded its Constitutional mandate and boundaries.
Such is the case with a significant number of IT-related patents today.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What a waste of all the work and creativity of the people that worked at Kodak.
However, for copyright, that's now "until hell freezes over"
Even Disney will be hard-pressed to get copyright extended beyond about 115-120 years and have it stick.
Why? Because I doubt you can get 5 justices of the Supreme Court to agree that "for a limited time" means longer than any living human has been alive.
Yes, there are and will be exceptions such as unpublished works and works which first fell under Federal copyright protection long after their creation (e.g. old previously-unpublished works, sound recordings first published prior to the early 1970s, some foreign works not published in the USA until long after their original publication, etc.), but even in those cases, if it ever reaches their bench the Supreme Court will rule that US copyright protection is limited by our Constitution to about 115-120 years from the effective date of the American copyright.
Extend these numbers if and when the maximum human lifespan goes beyond current levels.
So, instead of copyright lasting "until hell freezes over," it will last until "everyone alive when the item entered copyright is dead."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The alternative is going bankrupt. Kodak has already done much of its restructure, but it needs cash flow in the interim. Cut the usual 'Wall St fat cats are crushing the man' BS, it's just a company trying to stay afloat.
Bloomberg reports that Kodak has agreed to sell the patent portfolio for $525 million, despite previous valuations of over $2 billion."
I just can't figure out how Kodak ended up in bankruptcy to begin with when they have leadership like this...
It was a sad, sad day when they allowed the trading and amassing of ideas and exclusion of their use to others.
Before that is was land.
Before that it was wealth.
Next they will allow the trading of life itself...not wait that was done before all the above...
Thanks for the info.
Now bend over and take your benefit!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
... rightys in order to sue others, should be against the law as it is clearly so totally out ofi the original intent and purpose of property rights.
Because the troll produces absolutely nothing that they can be sued in retaliation for. A large corporation ostensibly creates products in which they can be sued for patent violations on as well, creating the situation of mutually-assured-destruction that we have in the mobile sector now. You will become a target if you get too aggressive.
Patent trolls are just scumbag lawyers who produce nothing, provide no benefit to society and accept no risk other than the time they spend arguing in court.
More than once the court set aside the "perpetual copyright by way of multiple extension" claims because they didn't see the Sonny Bono law in 1998 as fitting into that scenario.
But if Disney tries to protect Mickey Mouse by extending copyright prior to it entering the public domain, I very much doubt the courts will ignore these arguments again, even if Disney is "smart enough" to get other countries to extend their copyrights first so America can be seen to be extending its copyrights in the interests of international harmonization.
You may be right though, future Supreme Courts may allow copyrights to extend beyond 120 years, but not until after Mickey Mouse is in the public domain.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
[*] Yes, I know we have reclaimed some of the Netherlands from the sea, that is still a communal effort, not the work of one man.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It feels strange when a company with true IP value sells for half the value of a company with no patents. Compared to the Instagram sale to FB for $1 billion. Instagram has no patents... simply a user base following that could leave at any time. Yet Kodak with a physical brand and history sells for so much less.