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Brian Hinman of Allied Security Trust

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Among the speakers at the Conference on the ?Business? of Intellectual Property is

Brian Hinman
Chief Executive Officer
Allied Security Trust (AST)

Brian Hinman is currently CEO of AST. Previously he was Vice President, Intellectual Property and Licensing for IBM Corporation. While at IBM, Brian held various positions including Business Development Executive for IBM Research at the Thomas J Watson Research Laboratory. Prior to IBM, Brian was Corporate Director of Business Development and Licensing at Westinghouse Corporation. Brian holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Also, from Jim Moore's Blog:

Have you heard the expression?kill the snake while it is small??

Google, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Verizon and Ericsson have reportedly joined together to fund a snake-killing operation. Smart technologists and small companies beware.

(...)

The motivation of both the Allied Security Trust and of Intellectual Ventures is to protect the oligopoly positions of their large member firms. The largest firms in the IT space?Google, IBM, Microsoft, are not so much in competition with each other as with the future. They are not in competition with existing firms so much as with ?companies unborn? who may?and probably will?disrupt their markets as profoundly as they disrupted their predecessors?.

Large companies are not afraid of each other?in general
they have worked out relations that work to the benefit of
each other. Rather, Google, for example, is most afraid of the likes of Facebook. There are always new small innovative companies capable of growing large enough to
challenge the current behemoths. Strong patents help small
companies stay independent while they grow. Small companies use their patents to help stave off crushing clone-based competition from the slower-moving but vastly more powerful giants.

What large companies are afraid of is innovation by small companies
and individual inventors. Both the Allied Security Trust and Intellectual Ventures
are mechanisms invented by large companies to make them safe from
small, disruptive newcomers. Both enable large companies to buy up
patents that might pose potential threats, and get them out of the
hands of small firms and individuals.

IPBiz notes that Alexander Graham Bell had to fight off Western Union, who had lined up Elisha Gray and
Thomas Edison. Then, Alexander Graham Bell was after the Wright Brothers. Same old, same old...

See also

"Coalition for Patent Fairness" morphs into Allied Security Trust?

Full post as published by IPBiz on July 15, 2008 (boomark / email).