Patent Law
Tech Companies Seek to Head Off Patent Trolls With IP-Buying Group
Posted Jun 30, 2008, 07:18 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Several high-tech companies have joined a group that seeks to deny sustenance to patent trolls.
The group plans to buy rights to intellectual property, beating patent trolls to the marketplace, the Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.). The so-called trolls buy patent rights and then sue companies for infringement.
The new group, the Allied Security Trust, will grant its members a nonexclusive license to the technology and then will sell the patents, the story says. Companies that join have to pay a $250,000 membership and place about $5 million in escrow for patent purchases.
Members include Verizon Communications Inc., Google Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Comments
Posted by associate - 3 months, 1 week, 3 days, 20 hours, 48 minutes ago
So they’re buying patent rights that they might infringe from the inventors instead of just stealing them?
It’s funny how you can put a negative slant on the positive implications of “patent trolls”; getting companies to evaluate and possibly license small inventors’ patent rights before using the patented technology. That’s all the small inventors/companies wanted in the first place, before all of this “patent troll"/"patent investment company"/"non-practicing entity” stuff came up.