Home Messages Index
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index

[News] Microsoft 'Spinoff' the Biggest Patent Troll in the United States

  • Subject: [News] Microsoft 'Spinoff' the Biggest Patent Troll in the United States
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:47:46 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
  • Xref: ellandroad.demon.co.uk comp.os.linux.advocacy:690354
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Acacia tops troll litigaition league

,----[ Quote ]
| Acacia Technologies is the most litigious non-practising entity/troll (delete 
| according to preference) in the United States. According to research done by 
| PatentFreedom, which is featured in an article to be published in the next 
| issue of IAM, Acacia has been involved in a total of 308 cases in the US 
| courts, 239 of which have been filed since 2003. In second place is Rates 
| Technology Inc, which has been involved in 130 cases – although just 38 have 
| been over the last six years.      
`----

http://www.iam-magazine.com/blog/Detail.aspx?g=31e01d61-2f07-488e-9e56-32a96383071e

Microsoft inside.


Recent:

Ideas Are Everywhere... So Why Do We Limit Them?

,----[ Quote ]
| Gladwell uses this to talk up what Myhrvold is doing, suggesting that
| Intellectual Ventures is really about continuing that process, getting those
| ideas out there -- but he misses the much bigger point: if these ideas are
| the natural progression, almost guaranteed to be discovered by someone sooner
| or later, why do we give a monopoly on these ideas to a single discoverer?
| Myhrvold's whole business model is about monopolizing all of these ideas and
| charging others (who may have discovered them totally independently) to
| actually do something with them. Yet, if Gladwell's premise is correct (and
| there's plenty of evidence included in the article), then Myhrvold's efforts
| shouldn't be seen as a big deal. After all, if it wasn't Myhrvold and his
| friends doing it, others would very likely come up with the same thing sooner
| or later.
|
| This is especially highlighted in one anecdote in the article, of Myhrvold
| holding a dinner with a bunch of smart people... and an attorney. The group
| spent dinner talking about a bunch of different random ideas, with no real
| goal or purpose -- just "chewing the rag" as one participant put it. But the
| next day the attorney approached them with a typewritten description of 36
| different inventions that were potentially patentable out of the dinner. When
| a random "chewing the rag" conversation turns up 36 monopolies, something is
| wrong. Those aren't inventions that deserve a monopoly.
`----

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080507/0114581051.shtml


Related:

Who is the world's biggest patent troll?

,----[ Quote ]
| In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different
| answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild
| of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as
| $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from
| universities in Asia."  
`----

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9816163-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20


Playing Microsoft Patent Poker

,----[ Quote ]
| This time though, while Ballmer slinks away to try to con … convince people
| that Microsoft Unified Communications somehow offers people more than what
| Cisco's VOIP (voice over IP) been offering customers for years, a patent
| attack finally launches at Linux. Specifically, IP Innovation, a subsidiary
| of Acacia Technologies Group, has filed a patent infringement claim against
| Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat.    
|
| So was it just timing, or was it something more? Let's take a look at the
| players.  
`----

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2201579,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616


Top Ten Patent Trolls of 2007

,----[ Quote ]
| 3. Acacia. I didn't start tracking Acacia carefully until the summer. But
| still, on my blog I have reported on over two dozen lawsuits brought by
| Acacia this year, against more than 235 defendants. That's in addition to the
| over 200 lawsuits Acacia filed in previous years against hundreds and
| hundreds of defendants. And that's not including the two lawsuits (at least)
| Acacia has filed in December against 20 more defendants (yes, Acacia, I'm
| watching you). Acacia's business model, as a publicly traded company, is to
| accumulate patents and sue as many companies as possible in order to extract
| licenses. They have a market cap of over 275 million - that pays for a lot of
| lawsuits. Unlike other trolls, Acacia tends to not focus on one court in
| particular, although they have sampled the Eastern District of Texas more
| this year than in the past.
`----

http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-ten-patent-trolls-of-2007.html
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFI0EWiU4xAY3RXLo4RAmn9AKCZthREGzMEPTegzgjqC1VcLTpBawCgs18C
7RedT4ZUNrXsXvA/LsMIR5k=
=R7/p
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index