More Patents That Have Touched Both Intellectual Ventures And Ocean Tomo Showing Up In Lawsuits

from the this-is-not-good dept

Last year, we noted that more and more patents previously held by Intellectual Ventures were showing up in lawsuits -- with rumors swirling that IV still got a cut of money collected on at least some of those patents. Then, in December, IV finally filed its first patent infringement lawsuits directly. However, more of its "former" patents are popping up in lawsuits as well. Joe Mullin has the details of yet another secretive shell patent holding company, called Pragmatus, that has some former IV patents and sued Facebook, YouTube and Linkedin last year, and now is suing basically all of the cable industry, claiming that its patents (5,581,479 and 5,636,139) cover the rather broad concept of video-on-demand.

What's equally interesting (and/or troubling, depending on your point of view) is that these patents also passed through Ocean Tomo, the favored tool of laundering patents by auctioning them off. For years, we've questioned the claims of Ocean Tomo that it's really just helping to establish a "market" to extract the value of patents. In reality, it seems that it's created a tool for putting a massive tollbooth on innovation, taking broad and useless patents (i.e., patents that really don't teach anything new or non-obvious at all) and putting them in the hands of lawyers who sue companies who actually innovate. It's worth noting that the patents that IV used in its own lawsuit last year also appeared to travel via Ocean Tomo (it appears that's what AUCTNYC8 really is).

Once again, the deeper you dig into these stories, you realize that it's really just a bunch of lawyers passing around patents to figure out who can sue companies who actually do stuff. This is why it's frustrating when the press falls for IV's ridiculous spin about how it's really inventing things. As far as we can tell, nothing "invented" at IV has hit the market in any meaningful way in its many years of existence. But a bunch of the patents that it has bought and sold over time are being asserted against a wide range of companies who actually do innovate. I'm really at a loss as to how anyone can look at this setup and claim the system is working. The system seems to simply be a way to extract money from companies that actually innovate and give it to a bunch of lawyers who think this is all a big game.

Filed Under: patents
Companies: intellectual ventures, ocean tomo

Is The Economy Taking A Bite Out Of Abusive Patent Lawsuits?

from the one-can-hope... dept

We've never been a fan of Ocean Tomo, the "patent auction" shop that was seen as something of a clearing house for lawyers and patent hoarders looking to buy up patents to squeeze money out of other companies. However, in February, we wrote about an article in the Chicago Tribune insisting that the tough economy was increasing patent sales as companies looked to squeeze more value out of their patent portfolios. We questioned the article, noting that it showed absolutely no proof whatsoever that sales were up -- other than a claim (with no data) from an Ocean Tomo exec, who had every incentive to make people believe that sales were up.

But, in reality, it turns out sales aren't up. They're way, way, way down.

Joe Mullin writes about the latest Ocean Tomo auction that can reasonably be termed a total disaster after sales didn't just fall, but fell off a cliff:

While some folks I spoke to before the auction said they expected sales this year to be down by as much as 50 percent from last year, the final results were much worse. Friday's auction took in just under $2.9 million--more than 80 percent less than the roughly $17 million in patent sales generated by the company's San Francisco auction last year.

Out of more than 80 lots of patents on the block, only six sold. (An Ocean Tomo auction "lot" can include a single patent, several patents, or a portfolio of patents in related technology.) Ocean Tomo tacks on a 10 percent fee paid by buyers, and also charges fees to sellers, meaning the company probably took in less than $1 million for itself....

Ocean Tomo CEO James Malackowski looked a bit shaken by the end of the day.

"Obviously the market has become more selective," he said in brief concluding remarks.

That, of course, is exactly the opposite of what Ocean Tomo was telling reporters just a few weeks ago (and those reporters repeated it without question).

In the meantime, Saul Hansell of the NY Times, notes that one of the very few buyers was RPX, a company we covered last year, which is still insisting that its business model is never to sue for infringement but to simply let tech companies "license" its portfolio as a way of having ammo against other patent infringement lawsuits. It's sort of "Intellectual Ventures-lite." This was the original business plan of IV, but no one really believes that IV won't eventually sue -- and I'd imagine the same is true of RPX. At some point, its A-list investors will demand a bigger return, and using the portfolio to sue will just be too tempting.

Filed Under: economy, patent auction, patents
Companies: ocean tomo, rpx

Are Intellectual Property Sales Growing In The Recession?

from the evidence-please dept

The Chicago Tribune has an article claiming that intellectual property sales are "growing" despite the recession, as companies look to sell off what they're not using. Except... the article doesn't present any evidence whatsoever. It simply quotes some execs at Ocean Tomo, the IP auction house who has a vested interest in getting more companies to "sell" their patents. It's pretty weak that the Chicago Tribune is effectively publishing a press release for Ocean Tomo, never once substantiating the headline or the claims from Ocean Tomo execs. I don't doubt that some companies will grow more desperate and may resort to trying to "sell" useless patents, but if the article (and Ocean Tomo execs) are going to claim it as fact, you'd think they'd present some evidence to back it up.

Filed Under: auctions, intellectual property, recession
Companies: ocean tomo

Ocean Tomo Patents Being Used To Shake Down Companies That Have Online Recommendations

from the ebay-for-patent-trolls dept

Ocean Tomo is a company that's been around for a few years, trying to establish itself as the auction house for patents. I've already made clear how troubling I believe its business model to be, but the company always tries to put a friendly face on it, claiming that it's not about aiding so-called "patent trolls" but actually reducing the problem of patent trolling. However, that (of course) isn't what's actually happening. A patent on personal recommendation systems ("if you bought x, you'll like y") was bought via Ocean Tomo by what seems likely to be a bunch of lawyers under the company name Quito (though, it's not entirely clear who's involved) and is now being used in a lawsuit against thirteen big internet companies that employ any type of rating system. The companies being sued are: Netflix, Amazon, Yahoo, RealNetworks, last.fm, Pandora Media, Slacker Inc., Veoh, Hulu, NBC Universal, CBS, News Corp., and Strands.

As you look through that list, you'll recognize that some have done significantly innovative work in taking the concept of an online recommendation system and actually making it useful. The simple idea of doing recommendations is pretty straightforward. Making it work well? Not so much. Hell, that's why Netflix is offering $1 million to anyone who can improve their recommendation engine by just 10%. The basic ideas expressed in the patent are not where the value in these recommendation systems lies. It's in the actual effort of figuring out how to make them work better. This patent has nothing to do with the actual success of a recommendation system, but the holders of it may now get a pay day just for holding the patent, thanks to Ocean Tomo's auctions. And, of course, this means that all of those companies that were actually innovating will, at the very least, now need to spend legal dollars defending against this massive innovation blocker.

Filed Under: patents, recommendations
Companies: amazon, cbs, hulu, last.fm, nbc universal, netflix, news corp., ocean tomo, pandora, quito, realnetworks, slacker, veoh, yahoo

Hey, Didn't Taxpayers Pay For Those Patents NASA Is Auctioning Off?

from the i-thought-so dept

ReallyEvilCanine writes in to let us know that Ocean Tomo, the patent auctioning company has worked out an agreement to auction off a package of 25 NASA patents covering things like signal processing, GPS for spacecraft and sensor technologies. Ocean Tomo always presents itself as somehow creating value from patents, but always seems to ignore how its version of creating value often means significant value lost to actual innovators. In this case, there's an even bigger question: didn't taxpayers pay for those patents by funding NASA? So why is some company now going to benefit from them, while locking the public out? In effect, the public is paying twice (at potentially inflated prices) for these inventions. Yet, you won't hear that from Ocean Tomo or the press reports about this auction, which note:

"Creating a market for patented technology funded by NASA benefits both the government and the commercial sector that will take advantage of it."

That leaves out the taxpayers who funded this in the first place and is simply incorrect. It harms the commercial sector by making them pay again for something. If NASA wanted to benefit the commercial sector, it could have placed those patents in the public domain, so that the commercial sector could compete to do something useful with them, thereby spurring on competition and more innovation.

Filed Under: auctions, nasa, patents, taxpayers
Companies: nasa, ocean tomo