Verizon

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.