Dan Rayburn of Streaming Media penned an excellent article on what some term, “patent trolls.” These companies buy intellectual property without the intent of producing something and instead extract license fees from companies who are producing something. Most of the time, it is easier and less expensive for a larger company to simply enter into a licensing agreement than to litigate with these intellectual property holding companies. Acacia Research Corporation is one such company that made quite a bit of noise a few years ago with their broad digital video patents portfolio. They licensed their patents to hundreds of big media companies and even sent letters to numerous independent telephone companies.
As Rayburn’s article points out, the tide may be turning against the patent trolls to some extent as some of the larger players like Intel have fought back and their has even been some legislation introduced by Senators Hatch (R – Utah) and Leahy (D – Vermont) to rein in the patent system. As reported in the Multichannel News article, Verizon Unlikely to Sue Cable on VoIP, there has been some pushback at the court level as a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the KSR vs. Teleflex case on April 30 of this year may make it more difficult to defend “obvious” patents.
For more good information on the Acacia case, please see this link:
http://www.streamingmedia.com/patent/
