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Intellectual Ventures

Intellectual Ventures (IV) is a patent troll. They apply for and buy patents, and bring product developers to court for royalties. According to Dennis Crouch in late 2012, Intellectual Ventures "may now be the largest worldwide patent holder".[1]

According to The Economist, in 2009 Intellectual Ventures applied for about 450 patents for its own inventions and they are among world's top 50 patent filers. It was also reported they have raised over $5 billion to buy up thousands of patents.[2]

Intellectual Ventures was co-founded by Nathan Myhrvold, who previously worked as CTO of Microsoft.[3] Even lawyers who like software patents call IV a troll.[4]

Selling patents to other trolls

As well as launching their own lawsuits, Intellectual Ventures also sells patents to other trolls, such as the sales of:

  • US5,251,294 to Webvention LLC[5][6]
  • US7,730,132, US7,822,813, and US7,831,663 to Pragmatus AV.[7]
  • US5771354 to Oasis research.[8] In August 2010, Oasis research filed suit against nineteen companies over this patent.[9]
  • The patents used by Lodsys.[10]

A co-founder of IV explained: "We sell for some amount of money up front, and we get some percentage of the royalty stream down the road that is generated from these assets."[11]

Related pages on ESP Wiki

External links

2010 litigation and licensing

References