Patent Hoarders Hiding Behind Shell Companies In Lawsuits
from the can't-admit-anything dept
While it used to be that patent hoarding companies like Acacia would file their lawsuits under their own names, more recently the trend has been to hide behind a series of shell companies. The latest is Altitude Capital Partners, a company we've discussed in the past. It's raised hundreds of millions of dollars solely to invest in patents. While officially a private equity firm, it's clear that the company is clearly just a patent hoarder. While it appears to have changed its website somewhat, it used to list "Number and Quality of Potential Infringers" as an investment criteria. It's clearly taken that to heart in its latest series of lawsuits against companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL, RIM, Palm and many others. The interesting thing, though, is that Altitude is doing its best to hide its involvement in these lawsuits, just like it tried to hide an earlier investment in Visto. Instead, it's been using a series of shell companies that are clearly formed solely for the purpose of filing these lawsuits. In the case of Altitude, it appears to be quite difficult to even track down that they're involved at all. Acacia has been doing the same thing as well. There could be a few reasons for the use of such shell companies -- but a big one might be to pretend that these really are cases of "little inventors" vs "big companies" instead of the truth, which appears to be big time investors with hundreds of millions of dollars looking to use questionable patents to squeeze money out of successful companies. Just how Jefferson and Madison envisaged things when they set out to create the patent system.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: patent hoarding, patent trolls, patents, private equity
Companies: altitude capital
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Want to Play a Game ?
"The shell game (also known as Thimblerig, Three shells and a pea, the old army game) is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is an illegal confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud. In confidence trick slang, this famous swindle is referred to as a short-con because it is quick and easy to pull off."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mikey going nuts
You can have one for under 300 $ in just 5 minutes over the Internet
it's corporate law in the US
Use it to your advantage or shut up if you can't
Big corps use shell companies all the time
Not to mention all the money laundering going on...
This is the corporate world today, dude
Patent lawsuits are just a tiny little part of this corporate shell game
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Mikey going nuts
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Mikey going nuts
meaningful instead of whining about Mike's patent articles?
Nothing in the article said that the practice was illegal, just dishonest. The company goes out of its way to hide its actions and create a false impression to help win patent lawsuits.
"it's corporate law in the US
Use it to your advantage or shut up if you can't"
Yes...let's never criticize or call attention to any law's shortcomings. In fact, while we're at it, let's get rid of judicial review and cross out Article V of the Constitution.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
to help and maintain futher lifestyle
[ link to this | view in thread ]
automated ship safety apparetus running on passive energy
[ link to this | view in thread ]