When Patents Attack

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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An Offer He Couldn’t Refuse: Intellectual Property Analysis of Chris Crawford, Intellectual Ventures, and Oasis Research

Uncited prior art may hinder the strength and defensibility of patents owned by a “back-end deal” entity derived from Intellectual Ventures, currently using these patents in a lawsuit. Following the recent “When Patents Attack” article, we explore the quality of bullets used in the story’s “mafia” reference to see if it’s a real threat or a protection scheme using rubber bullets issued by the USPTO… after all, what Chris Crawford “Invented” was rejected by the Patent Office in 1996 and the patent that was issued was coached into being by a friendly patent examiner!

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