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In-flight device maker sues everyone seeking flash memory bonanza
,----[ Quote ]
| Struggling in-flight entertainment house e.Digital is challenging some of the
| world's biggest gadget companies with claims that it owns vital patents for
| using removable flash memory in portable devices.
|
| It's targeting brands such as Casio, LG Electronics, Olympus, Samsung and
| Sanyo in a legal scrap filed last March. But e.Digital says there's a far
| larger pool of companies currently infringing its patents, and
| has "identified annual U.S. revenues of more than $20 billion," from products
| using its technology.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/27/edigital_patent_lawsuits/
It's the classic thing about "defensive" intellectual monopolies. When they
have products, it's all "just for defence", but when they lose business they
harp about trade secrets and other mumbo-jumbo to make money from. Microsoft
too will end up this way. It's already trying.
Recent:
Ideas Are Everywhere... So Why Do We Limit Them?
,----[ Quote ]
| Gladwell uses this to talk up what Myhrvold is doing, suggesting that
| Intellectual Ventures is really about continuing that process, getting those
| ideas out there -- but he misses the much bigger point: if these ideas are
| the natural progression, almost guaranteed to be discovered by someone sooner
| or later, why do we give a monopoly on these ideas to a single discoverer?
| Myhrvold's whole business model is about monopolizing all of these ideas and
| charging others (who may have discovered them totally independently) to
| actually do something with them. Yet, if Gladwell's premise is correct (and
| there's plenty of evidence included in the article), then Myhrvold's efforts
| shouldn't be seen as a big deal. After all, if it wasn't Myhrvold and his
| friends doing it, others would very likely come up with the same thing sooner
| or later.
|
| This is especially highlighted in one anecdote in the article, of Myhrvold
| holding a dinner with a bunch of smart people... and an attorney. The group
| spent dinner talking about a bunch of different random ideas, with no real
| goal or purpose -- just "chewing the rag" as one participant put it. But the
| next day the attorney approached them with a typewritten description of 36
| different inventions that were potentially patentable out of the dinner. When
| a random "chewing the rag" conversation turns up 36 monopolies, something is
| wrong. Those aren't inventions that deserve a monopoly.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080507/0114581051.shtml
Related:
Who is the world's biggest patent troll?
,----[ Quote ]
| In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different
| answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild
| of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as
| $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from
| universities in Asia."
`----
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9816163-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Playing Microsoft Patent Poker
,----[ Quote ]
| This time though, while Ballmer slinks away to try to con … convince people
| that Microsoft Unified Communications somehow offers people more than what
| Cisco's VOIP (voice over IP) been offering customers for years, a patent
| attack finally launches at Linux. Specifically, IP Innovation, a subsidiary
| of Acacia Technologies Group, has filed a patent infringement claim against
| Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat.
|
| So was it just timing, or was it something more? Let's take a look at the
| players.
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http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2201579,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616
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