News picks
Articles from other sources; copy title, first paragraph, and put URL in body of post.
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Don’t blame Nathan Myhrvold for taking advantage of the culture of rampant patent litigation in this country. He is only doing what large companies with vast patent portfolios such as IBM and Microsoft do on a daily basis: use the threat of patent infringement litigation to strike lucrative patent licensing deals.
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Myhrvold told the WSJ that he acknowledges facing resistance from companies he targets for licenses. But his patent inventory gives him leverage to extract settlements without litigation. “I say, ‘I can’t afford to sue you on all of these, and you can’t afford to defend on all these,’” he said.
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Indeed, according to the Journal, many of Myhrvold's investors "want to keep their involvement in Intellectual Ventures quiet anyway, either for competitive reasons or because they don't want to look like hypocrites by investing in his business while simultaneously fighting in Washington to curb his business model."
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Techdirt goes into depth on ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, adding a slew of new reasons to consider the patent-hoarding company the ultimate in creepiness. Intellectual Ventures is out on the fund-raising trail (again - it just raised $1 billion in late 2007), despite the fact that it appears to have demonstrated little ability to generate cash for anyone other than Myhrvold, even despite his amassed 20,000 patents.
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Today the leading District Court for patent infringement in Germany, the Landgericht Düsseldorf, has announced six additional verdicts finding that DVD disc manufacturer Optical Disc Service (“ODS”) has infringed certain patents licensed in the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License offered by MPEG LA, LLC as a result of ODS’s manufacture of DVD video discs.
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MPEG LA, LLC and SISVEL S.p.A. announce that as of August 26, 2008 the administration of the DVB-T licensing program, including the administration of all DVB-T Patent Portfolio Licenses previously executed by MPEG LA and licensees, has been transferred from MPEG LA to SISVEL. The DVB-T patent pool offers a fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to patents owned by France Telecom, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., and Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC) that have been determined to be essential for implementing DVB-T, the terrestrial digital television broadcast standard (European Telecommunications Standardization Institute ("ETSI") document ETS300744).
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The District Court DA 1/4sseldorf, Germany pronounced last week 12 verdicts on the merits finding that DVD disc manufacturers Dicentia Germany GmbH and Dicentia A/S (collectively, "Dicentia") have infringed certain patents in the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License offered by MPEG LA as a result of Dicentia's manufacture of DVD video discs.
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According to MacRumors Apple has filed a patent application for a cool new notification screen. It is a bit strange that a patent would be needed for something like this that even basic feature phones already use in some manner. This new notification screen would show your missed calls, text messages, and voicemail on a single display before you slid to unlock the iPhone. Other notifications may be supported on this display as well and this looks like a nice implementation.
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A startup that claims it has a better approach for helping high tech companies deal with the rising costs of patent litigation and licensing has gained backing from two large venture capitalists. RPX Corp. announced it has received an undisclosed amount of equity investments from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Charles River Ventures.
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The Acacia debacle had some many ‘coincidences’ around it (circumstantial evidence only), but Nathan Myhrvold is no coincidence. Him and his shell firm, Intellectual Ventures, are in part the creation of Microsoft’s former chairman, Bill Gates. We did stress some time in the past that Gates had actually invested in his former close colleague (Myhrvold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]), who operates a patent-trolling firm.
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Generally, every car uses a some kind of motor. But it would be very much more likely to be successful to sue for a company. Demanding royalties on so-called IP, knowing its competitor uses a derived model with the same internals to make it “tick”.
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by: zoobab 1221844511|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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You wait for years to find solutions to the problems that non-practising entities/patent trolls (delete as preferred) pose to operating companies and then three come along at the same time. Just weeks after the Allied Security Trust and PatentFreedom came into the public arena, a new company has joined them.
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Self interest has always been an issue when it comes to patents in Europe, as the Community patent negotiations have shown us time and again. However, not all Council members are the same. And the EPO management itself has frequently clashed with member states over a range of issues, including financing and sending EPO work to national offices.
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On Thursday, 18 September 2008, staff members of the European Patent Office (EPO) demonstrated in Brussels for a reform of its supervisory board. Examiners are complaining about the broken governance of the Institution. Examiners do not trust neither members of the Administrative Council, neither their President Brimelow. A patent examiner confessed that most of them were against software patents but as civil servants they were not allowed to speak out publicly about their concerns.
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Nathan Myhrvold: The genesis of this idea was when I was at Microsoft. We had a problem with patent liability. All these people were coming to sue us or demand payment. And Bill (Gates) asked me to think about if there was a solution. This is what I came up with.
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Former Microsoft exec Nathan Myhrvold has been collecting patents, extracting fees from technology companies via his company Intellectual Ventures. Is Myhrvold a patent troll with tech cred?
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Unlike most other pure licensing companies, Intellectual Ventures hasn’t filed patent-infringement lawsuits to help force settlements. But the group lobbying on behalf of tech companies in Washington, the Coalition for Patent Fairness — which includes several companies that have been approached for licensing deals by Intellectual Ventures — says it is only a matter of time. “Since these thousands of patents only give [Intellectual Ventures] the right to stop others from making products, through lawsuits, it is obvious what they intend to do,” the group said in a statement.
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Verizon, for instance, disclosed in a July filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to pay as much as $350 million for patent licenses and an equity stake in a patent-holding investment fund. The company operating that investment fund is Intellectual Ventures, according to a person familiar with the terms of the deal.
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This is absurd. The purpose of patent law is to promote the progress of the useful arts by giving inventors an incentive to invent. NASA engineers already have an incentive to invent: they’re being paid taxpayer dollars to do so. Accordingly granting patents to NASA is a pure dead-weight loss to the economy. It restricts the free flow of ideas with no offsetting benefit from improved incentives. Indeed, this is precisely why the copyrights on government-created works are immediately placed in the public domain.
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Microsoft Corp. and Pioneer Corp. signed a patent cross-licensing agreement that furthers the development of each company’s product lines and will expand technological innovation to enhance the overall customer experience. The cross-licensing agreement covers a broad range of consumer products, including Pioneer’s auto navigation products and televisions, as well as Microsoft’s software products. The agreement allows greater mutual access to each partner’s respective patent portfolio. The agreement, recently signed by representatives of both companies, expands the relationship between Microsoft and Pioneer to promote the incorporation of patented technologies in their respective products. Although the contents of the agreement, including the specific financial terms, are confidential, the parties indicated that Microsoft is being compensated by Pioneer.
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