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Intellectual Ventures' "catch and release" gambit

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The initial game plan of Intellectual Ventures was based on the presumed preference of (potential) infringers to license rather than litigate. That is now being supplemented by a strategy of threatening to sell IV patents to other parties, who might be more disposed to litigate.

Zusha Elinson describes the approach in the following manner:

With its new practice of selling off patents to third parties, litigation is much more likely. It's similar to the "catch and release" model used for some time by other patent-holding companies. That's a friendly sounding name for a threat that goes like this: Take a license because we're going to sell the patent on the open market -- and you never know what unscrupulous and lawsuit-prone troll is going to buy it.

Sadly, Elinson repeats the urban legend that Peter Detkin coined the term "patent troll":

That Niro was chosen to front this fight should put a wry smile on any patent lawyer's face. The widely used insult "patent troll" was coined to describe Niro and his clients by Peter Detkin, then an Intel Corp. lawyer. Detkin is now co-founder and vice chairman of Intellectual Ventures.

Elinson should read Wikipedia, or at least IPBiz.

It is of course ironic that Detkin and Niro have come full circle. The re-alignment further illustrates that so-called "patent reform" is about the money, not about abstract things like patent quality.

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 02, 2009 (boomark / email).