Once more unto the breach: Intellectual Property Analysis of Intellectual Ventures v. Canon et al

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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.

On September 9, Intellectual Ventures (“IV”) filed a lawsuit against Canon and Olympus, claiming patent infringement of nine of its patents regarding imaging device technologies. This lawsuit comes a little less than two months after IV’s last patent infringement suit against a number of computer memory device manufacturers or distributors, among which are Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. This is the third major round of patent infringement lawsuits filed by Intellectual Ventures.

Using the M·CAM DOORS™ analytic platform, an intellectual property analysis of the asserted Intellectual Ventures’ patents was conducted in order to understand their strength and defensibility in the face of precedent innovation – both actively maintained and abandoned in the public domain. The innovation space surrounding these patents, in particular U.S. Pat. No. 7,733,368 was examined to determine which patents may provide alternatives to or alter the value of IV’s properties.

In addition, following the quality control theme of previous Patently Obvious® reports on IV, M·CAM has conducted an inquiry into the degree to which IV’s actions may directly or indirectly benefit or harm its shareholder firms. An M·CAM DOORS™ analysis was conducted around the innovation space of the nine patents in the suit to reveal which investors in any Intellectual Ventures’ fund(s) could be affected by the outcome of the litigation. Additionally, our inquiry considers the degree to which patents held by IV shareholder companies may serve as uncited precedent innovation, which could be used to undermine or severely impair the enforceability of IV’s asserted patents.