Intellectual Ventures

On November 9th 2010, Personal Voice Freedom (PVF) filed an infringment suit against YMAX Corp. as well as its subsidiaries magicJack LP and TigerJet Network Inc. In an effort to fight off the case, magicJack filed for a reexamination of the asserted patent, US 7,336,654 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in November of 2011. The patent was reissued with amended claims and magicJack has subsequently appeared to enter a settlement agreement with PVF.

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.

While we here at M·CAM often try to see the lighter side of intellectual property issues when we perform our Patently Obvious® analyses, when as much as twenty percent of an entire country’s GDP is being exploited, we take it very seriously. The tone of this Patently Obvious® report reflects that fact.

Canon and Olympus hold a substantial amount of precedent innovation impacting the nine patents that have been asserted against them recently by Intellectual Ventures. In addition, Intellectual Ventures’ investors hold prior art and precedent innovation which, if disclosed, could vastly alter the enforceability of IV’s patents in suit.

Intellectual Ventures’ investors hold prior art and precedent innovation which, if disclosed, could vastly alter the enforceability of patents asserted in the DRAM industry. We wonder whether their IP holdings or their equity in IV matters more.