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Intellectual Property Expert Group
Intellectual Property Expert Group
Category Patent Trolls
The NPE (“Patent Trolls”) Minefield
Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs) and Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), also referred to as “patent trolls”, are causing heated discussions in the intellectual property space. They are commonly described as entities whose core business model is using IP to collect licensing fees instead…
Mad Men Thrive in Mid-Town Manhattan
Once the iconic Main Street of the advertising industry, Madison Avenue has quietly evolved into a center for Manhattan’s emerging intellectual property businesses. Don Draper, flamboyant Mad Men creative director, however, needn’t worry about the new neighbors cramping his style. They’re too…
Patent Thickets, right or wrong?
Patents are instituted to provide an incentive to innovate, which is important considering that innovation is a key driver for economic prosperity. Yet, what happens if the company that holds the patent right does not want to produce anything, but…
NPEs receive triple patent damages, PWC study shows
Damages awards for NPEs (non-practicing patent owning entities) are on average triple those of practicing entities, according to the 2010 Patent Litigation Study from PwC, recently made available. For some reason the report does not acknowledge that the higher quality and…
FRANDly Fire
The patent battle between Nokia and German IP asset management firm IPCom illustrates well the lack of practical understanding as to what fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (or FRAND) licensing terms practically means in Europe. IPEG blogged about this earlier. The…
Are NPE’s the New Patent Plutonomies?
Recently we blogged about Patent Plutonomies. The expression was coined following Ajay Kapur, (former) global strategist at Citigroup, who described countries which are defined by massive income and wealth inequality as “Plutonomies”. Translated into IPR, especially to the patent system,…
Independent Invention
Is “independent invention” a cure against trolls in that it can be argued that infringement cannot be established in case of an “independent invention”? No it is not. A lot of confusion, misunderstandings, half-truths, nonsensical quasi-lawerly talk exists around the…
How Sun Tzu Would Outflank Patent Trolls
The debate about patent trolls or NPEs is not slowing down and more voices are heard every time about how patent trolls can or should be addressed. David Wanetick of IncreMental Advantage has very specific advice to companies dealing with…
Patent Bubble
Over the years patent build up could go without repercussions for the patent “market”. Let us say the market for supply and demand for patent rights. Initially, during the 1980s and early 1990s this was because Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean…
Don’t Like a Blog, Sue It
Not many things gets emotional in Patent World it seems, except when it comes to NPEs, Patent Trolls and Those Who Oppose or Defend Them. When emotions run high and words come out fast, the pen can be much sharper…
Green-Orange-Red, the German Orange-Book decision is putting industry on alert
The recent German Federal Supreme Court ruling Orange-Book-Standard (BGH, 5/6/2009 – KZR 39/06) seems to be a strong attack on one of the core features of intellectual property rights: the provision of an injunctive relief in (patent) infringement proceedings. In…
Patent Integrity
CIP Forum 2009, currently held in Goteborg, Sweden, covers lot of IP management issues from valuation, open innovation and the relationship with IP, and of course contributions where the Patent Troll prominently appears as the bad guys. No IP forum…
Year’s End Thoughts on IP monetization
Investment in IP as an asset class has grown significantly over the last years, however it is still in its infancy. Analysis of historical returns remains difficult, as limited data are available. Therefore, it is challenging to predict how the…
Closed Auctions and the Risks of Willful Infringement
Auctions to sell assets have been known for long. Goethe proposed the publisher Vieweg in 1797 to sell his manuscript of his poem Hermann and Dorothea via an auction (later to become known as “a second-price auction”). In IP no…
Intellectual Ventures and the Growing IP Monetization Community
We noticed over the last two years an increase in investment houses to invest in IP as an asset class showing quite interesting and different risk profiles. We continue to see parties tapping on this new interest finding appropriate business…
Patent Acquisition and Venture Capital
Last week the Wall Street Journal revealed that a group of tech companies got together to incorporate a new group, called Allied Security Trust. The way it is being described, see the WSJ Law Blog, is that the companies, among…
Do Not Blame Patent Trolls
In an earlier blog, we wondered “Will 2008 bring the same troll trend in Europe?”. Well it’s no surprise that it does. A yet relatively unknown NPE (Non Practicing Entity, or otherwise called “patent troll”) an IP exploitation company called…
Patent Trolls Statistics, will Europe escape the trolls?
Patent Troll Tracker tracks patent litigation. Read their year end’s “rundown on some numbers concerning patent litigation“. The Troll Tracker looks at the Fortune 100 (top 100 US companies in terms of revenues) to see who got sued the most…
Patent Trolls – The Pot Calling the Pot … Black
Not later than the nineteenth century patenting of the automobile by Rochester patent attorney George Selden paper patents and marginally developed patents have been obtained for the principal purpose of suing major manufacturers. Whether good or bad, providing a nasty…