Intellectual Ventures Sheds At Least Part of Its "Patent Troll" Reputation

pacopico writes Intellectual Ventures, the world's most infamous patent troll, has changed its tune — maybe. According to a story in Businessweek, the company has started turning a number of its ideas into products, ranging from hydration sensors to waterless washing machines and self-healing concrete. The story reveals some new tidbits about IV, including that it pays inventors $17,000 per idea, has a new start-up fund and that one of its cofounders got tossed out of school for hacking. IV is obvisouly trying to improve its reputation, but plenty of skeptics remain who think this is just a ruse meant to draw attention away from its patent lawsuits.

Comments

The only lesson to learn from this

[i kan reed]

Is that punishing patent trolls causes innovation.

This is not new information

[93 Escort Wagon]

When This American Life did its expose on Intellectual Ventures' activities a few years ago, IV talked about their labs and made many claims that the money was being used to fund innovation and create new products - a claim that did not stand up to even a modicum of scrutiny.

Basically IV is just trying to find a new patsy to listen to its same old song. Welcome to the show, Business Week!

Intellectual Vultures?

[The Grim Reefer]

Seriously, why don't they just change their name to Intellectual Vultures? I'd at least respect them for their honesty.