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Intellectual Ventures

Revision as of 17:04, 21 August 2011 by Ciaran (talk | contribs) (External links: ===2010 litigation and licensing===)

Intellectual Ventures (IV) is a patent troll. They apply for and buy patents, and bring product developers to court for royalties.

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.[1]

Intellectual Ventures was co-founded by Nathan Myhrvold, who previously worked as CTO of Microsoft.[2] Even lawyers who like software patents call IV a troll.[3]

Selling patents to other trolls

Intellectual Ventures also sells patents to other trolls, such as the sale of US5,251,294 to Webvention LLC[4] and US7,730,132, US7,822,813, and US7,831,663 to Pragmatus AV.[5]

Related pages on ESP Wiki

External links

2010 litigation and licensing

References