Crowdfunded Project Attempts To Unveil Intellectual Ventures' Hidden Web Of Patents

Patents

from the might-not-be-so-easy dept

Fri, Oct 26th 2012 1:40pm — Mike Masnick

We've written about patent trolling giant Intellectual Ventures many times, including how it is notoriously secretive about almost everything. Its deals with companies (often involving them forking over hundreds of millions of dollars to not get sued) are hidden away behind strict non-disclosure agreements. It also hides the various patents in over 1,000 shell companies. At other times it "sells" patents to independent trolls, but most people believe that it still gets a cut of any revenue that comes out of those trolling operations.

An operation called IP Checkups -- a "patent analytics firm" -- is trying to shine some more light on IV's secret patent portfolio and has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to investigate the company's patents.

We want to create a publicly-accessible database of patents owned by Intellectual Ventures and its shell companies. We also want to share our investigation with curious observers, using our online IV Thicket case files to show how we unearth Intellectual Ventures’ patent portfolio.

They plan to identify all of the patents, then try to "unravel the complex web of Intellectual Ventures' shell companies and financial interests to see where Intellectual Ventures is holding its IP assets." Finally, they plan to reveal all of the information publicly. The company claims that it believes in the patent system, but that it believes that the market for patents needs to be more open and transparent.

I have no idea how effective this project might be, or how well they'll be able to track down the patents or untangle the shell companies. Attempts by others to do this (on more of an ad hoc basis) haven't worked out too well. They're seeking $80,000 for the project, which strikes me as both ambitious for a crowdfunded project and (at the same time) probably way too little money to accomplish the goal. If I were them, I would have started by already revealing a few key IV patents or questionable shell company relationships to first generate interest in going further -- but that, alone, could be difficult. Still, it will be interesting to see if they have any success in shining some light on the dark corners of IV's trolling operations.

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Filed Under: crowdfunding, patents, shell companies
Companies: intellectual ventures, ip checkups

13 Comments

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arcan, 26 Oct 2012 @ 1:45pm

who wants to bet on IV having a patent concerning discovery of IV's hidden web of patents?
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 26 Oct 2012 @ 1:57pm

Re: Lurching Incredulous Recursions!
Or maybe, just maybe, they own the patent on "crowd-sourced-funding innovation(s) over a network"!!

(duh-duh-*duhh*!)
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2012 @ 2:01pm

How do we know this isn't an IV shell corporation...
They could just be 'generating interest' in licensing IV's great patent portfolio....
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Lloyd Kaufman, 26 Oct 2012 @ 2:06pm

Patent Trolls
I will contribute to Indie GoGo project to xpose patent trolls.
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Baldaur Regis (profile), 26 Oct 2012 @ 2:18pm

FUD is part of their business model. Their PATENTED business model.
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Anonymous14, 26 Oct 2012 @ 2:51pm

crowdfunded investigative journalism
This is the future right? The implosion of newspaper revenues will leave much of investigative journalism resorting to either 'sponsorship' or 'crowdfunding'. At least crowdfunding allows for an air of independence and integrity.
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wmc (profile), 26 Oct 2012 @ 2:53pm

Source for social justice
Crowdfunding will become a force for social justice. See Crowdfunding the Supreme Court: http://www.indiegogo.com/supremecourt

Also see my blog posting on how to crowdfund. http://crowdfundingnow.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-to-crowdfund.html
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John Fenderson (profile), 26 Oct 2012 @ 3:12pm

Re: How do we know this isn't an IV shell corporation...
They could just be 'generating interest' in licensing IV's great patent portfolio....
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John Fenderson (profile), 26 Oct 2012 @ 3:13pm

Re: Re: How do we know this isn't an IV shell corporation...
Comment fail!

What I meant to say was:

You misspelled "paying IV their protection money".
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John Fenderson (profile), 26 Oct 2012 @ 3:15pm

Re: crowdfunded investigative journalism
I hope so. Newspapers (and TV) largely stopped doing investigative reporting decades ago, shortly before they largely stopped doing journalism at all.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2012 @ 3:26pm

I hope for their sake that the people at the Crowdfunded Project have taken great care to remain completely and thoroughly anonymous so that they are not personally driven into the ground, bankruptcy, or jail like Pirate Bay and Winkileaks.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Oct 2012 @ 3:36am

Re:
Except, of course, Pirate Bay is still up and running as though nothing happened, and there's still a rather heavy fog of discomfort regarding conflict of interest of judges who are members of the recording industry in one way or another passing judgement over anyone in anything regarding music....
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Lily, 2 Nov 2012 @ 10:14am

Mike Masnick - we heard you!
In response to your post, we updated our campaign page to give a glimpse into our methodology for finding IV patents. After a week or so, we'll follow up with a public demo of the database, populated by some of the initial patents we find.

Piqued your interest?
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