intellectual property

Insider Patents: Transparency in proprietary advice – or the Ghost of Gordon Gekko

The FBI is investigating 120 alleged cases of insider trading. During our research into this week’s hot topic of who really owns social networking – Amazon, Facebook, or Yahoo! – we reported that a consulting company holding patents in the social networking / e-commerce space – patents that clearly impact the future business of Goldman’s darling, Facebook. In the knowledge economy, how do traders, consultants, and other professional services selectively use information gained from clients or partners without tripping over ethical and legal obstacles?

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The Social [Amazon] Network: Intellectual Property Analysis of Amazon.com's social networking patents

Amazon owns a growing set of social networking patents that describe key aspects of Facebook and legally predate Facebook by seven (7) years. Given Facebook’s strategy of back-filling its patent portfolio to retroactively protect itself (i.e. the company filed over 410 US patent applications in the past 18 months vs its 56 granted US patents), what do these Amazon patents mean to Facebook's investors and its forecast $100 billion dollar valuation?

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Cracking the Whip: Intellectual Property Analysis of Intellectual Ventures v AT&T et al.

On February 16, 2012, Intellectual Ventures (“IV”) launched its seventh patent infringement suit, this time against AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile . In a familiar pattern, all but one of the patents in the suit were assigned to what appear to be IV “shell” companies before their most recent assignment to Intellectual Ventures by name. To IV’s chagrin, all three defendants control significant intellectual property estates in the technology space of the asserted patents; AT&T alone owns almost 500 properties that predate the patents being asserted against them.

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Amazon’s Fulfillment: Intellectual Property Analysis of Amazon.com’s order fulfillment patents

Last year, Amazon spent nearly $4.6 billion or 10% of its net sales on fulfillment. To offset those expenses, Amazon has been monetizing its fulfillment capabilities through arrangements with its marketplace sellers and leveraging its purchasing power with delivery companies. In 2011 alone, Amazon generated over $1.5 billion in shipping related revenue. Clearly, these fulfillment strategies are vital to Amazon as are, by default, the proprietary technologies that underpin them. Is Amazon’s intellectual property portfolio sufficient to defend these strategies?

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The Social Network: Intellectual Property Analysis of Facebook, Inc.

Following Facebook’s February 1, 2012 filing for an Initial Public Offering, the market is wondering if Facebook’s quest for public status will paint an even bigger patent litigation target on its back. Is Facebook’s $100 billion valuation protected? Facebook itself certainly doesn’t seem to think so. After all, over 65% of Facebook’s portfolio was originally issued to other entities (e.g., they were NOT the source of innovation).

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A Real Deal? Intellectual Property Analysis of RealNetworks

RealNetworks, the company behind Real Player, recently agreed to sell about 190 patents and 170 pending patent applications to Intel Corp for $120 million. Intel announced it was getting “foundational media patents” in this acquisition, but should it have had a “real” look into the portfolio that it is acquiring before it agreed to purchase?

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