Legal News

Halliburton: Patenting Patent Trolling to Block Patent Trolls

By Dan Slater

Watch out Nathan Myhrvold, your business model may face threats from Halliburton.

Huh? Let us explain. Myhvold, perhaps the most written-about Law Blog subject who doesn’t own a law degree, is the former chief technology officer for Microsoft who’s quietly amassed a trove of 20,000-plus patents and patent applications. His firm, Intellectual Ventures, is using its clout to press tech giants into costly patent-licensing deals — making it, in other words, one of the world’s largest patent trolls.

Now, the Patently-O blog tells us that, in 2007, Halliburton filed for patent protection claiming a method of “patent acquisition and assertion by a (non-inventor) first party against a second party.” Patently-O writes: “It looks like the company wants to be able to sue non-inventing entities who try to patent and assert technology against a company who has been using the technology as a trade secret.” Here’s the application.

The AmLaw Daily, which pointed us to the news, tried to contact Halliburton about the application, which apparently attempts to patent a method for patent-trolling, and got the following response: The application “covers a technique for patenting secret aspects of a company’s business inferred through computer research of publicly available information.” The statement adds: “It is important to note that Halliburton has no intention of applying the technique offensively. Rather, Halliburton intends to use any patent that may issue from this application defensively to discourage entities that engage in such tactics.”

So, infers AmLaw Daily, Halliburton wants to patent patent trolling so it can block patent trolls.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 12, 2008 (boomark / email).