Patent troll Intellectual Ventures is more like a HYDRA

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/12/the_secret_life_of_the_patent_troll/

Stanford University researchers have compiled the most extensive set
of documentation to date of the activities of patent troll
Intellectual Ventures – and their work reveals a behemoth of truly
epic scale.

The study, The Giant Among Us, turned up an impressive 1,276 shell
companies operated by Intellectual Ventures, at least partly to keep
prying eyes away from its business model, and estimates that between
30,000 and 60,000 patents are held by the “mass aggregator”.

Although not all of Intellectual Ventures’ shell companies hold
patents – some are management entities, others handle investment
functions – the researchers write that “954 companies have patents
recorded against their names”. A further 242 shells, they suggest,
have been incorporated to receive patents covered by transactions that
haven’t yet been completed.

Even a low-end estimate – the patents actually recorded in the USPTO
as being assigned to one of those shells – identifies around 10,000
patents held by the firm.

At the upper end of the researchers’ estimates, Intellectual Ventures
would rank as the fifth-largest patent holder in the United States and
among the top fifteen patent holders worldwide.

Apart from companies that have tipped their patent portfolios into
Intellectual Ventures’ kitty, its sources include more than 50
universities (detailed by the researchers in the paper, spanning at
least eight countries; Australia is represented by Monash University
and the University of Western Sydney).

The paper also sheds light on the troll’s strategy: if its target
appears reluctant to play ball on a first approach, Intellectual
Ventures then licenses its patents to a more aggressive third party,
whose lawsuits demand a higher royalty than that originally demanded
by Intellectual Ventures.

The paper, by Tom Ewing of Stanford and Robin Feldman of the
University of California, is available here
[http://stlr.stanford.edu/pdf/feldman-giants-among-us.pdf].
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