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Tech giants join together to head off patent suits
01 июля 2008 |
Several tech-industry heavyweights are banding together to defend themselves against patent-infringement lawsuits. Their plan: to buy up key intellectual property before it falls into the hands of parties that could use it against them, say people familiar with the matter.
Verizon Communications Inc., Google Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson and Hewlett-Packard Co. are among the companies that have joined a group calling itself the Allied Security Trust, these people say.
One high-profile patent case that sent shivers through the tech industry was BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd.'s $612.5 million settlement in 2006 with NTP Inc., a small
Also troubling for tech firms, a number of companies have emerged in recent years with a business model based on acquiring intellectual property and using it as leverage to extract royalties from companies whose products or services rely on that technology. These companies, which critics call "patent trolls," look for patents that come on the market from companies going out of business, universities and individual inventors.
The Coalition for Patent Fairness, a group of technology and financial-services companies that has lobbied for patent legislation in
The new Allied Security Trust aims to buy patents that others might use to bring infringement claims against its members. Companies will pay roughly $250,000 to join the group and will each put about $5 million into escrow with the organization, to go toward future patent purchases, the people familiar with the initiative said.
Tech companies have tried various ways to protect themselves, including investing in Intellectual Ventures LLC, a patent-holding firm founded by former Microsoft Corp. executive Nathan Myhrvold.
To head off such concerns, companies in the new group will sell the patents they acquire after they have granted themselves a nonexclusive license to the underlying technology."It will never be an enforcement vehicle," said the group's chief executive, Brian Hinman, a former vice president of intellectual property and licensing at International Business Machines Corp."It isn't the intent of the companies to make money on the transactions." He declined to confirm who the group's member companies are.
Mr. Hinman said the group doesn't face any antitrust issues because it isn't a profit-making venture and its members don't actually own patents - they just grant themselves a license to them.
Ron Epstein, CEO of patent brokerage IPotential LLC, says companies that collect intellectual property are a boon to individual inventors who otherwise struggle to make money from their work. Mr. Epstein, formerly director of licensing at Intel Corp., said any company should be free to enforce its patent rights, regardless of whether it produces any products or services."That seems to me a distinction without a difference," he said.
Источник: Total Telecom
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