By
Alice Turner
21:23, June 30th 2008
Several tech power players have joined forces against the so-called patent trolls, entities which are preying on the patents of companies which are going down or of individual inventors and then pursue legal action against large companies which use similar technology. This practice has grown into a real business.
Cisco Systems Inc., Google Inc., Ericsson AB, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Verizon Communications Inc. are among the 11 founding members which have thus agreed to form an organization, called the Allied Security Trust, which will do the same patent-hunting as the "trolls" but instead will allow its parents to use them without risking infringement lawsuits.
This way patent profiteers will be cut off, hopefully. The Allied Security Trust will cost $500,000 to join with an additional $5,000,000 to be deposited for use in patent acquisition. Companies began taking patent trolls seriously after Research in Motion was nearly brought to its knees by a failed startup which alleged that RIM used its technology for delivering e-mail to the mobile devices.
Also, last month, a federal judge ruled that several controllers created by Nintendo such as Gamecube controller, the Wavebird wireless pad and the Wii Classic add-on are infringing the patents held by a Texas-based company, Anascape. However the patents were actually filed by Brad Armstrong of Paradise, California between the years of 1996 and 2001, and were awarded to him at various dates between 1999 and 2005.
Nintendo of America was ordered to pay $21 million to Anascape, but the company’s is appealing the verdict. The original lawsuit was filed in 2006 and Anascape also sued Microsoft for patent infringements on game controllers.
There are many such cases, and it isn't always the case that a large company is hassled more or less grounded by a patent troll. In some cases, large companies are patent trolls themselves. Think Vonage, which was hit with a wide array of infringement lawsuits after it started to gain market share at the expense of its large rivals.
