Intellectual Ventures Gets Transmeta Patents

from the patent-hoarding dept

Transmeta, of course, was the massively hyped semiconductor company that was going to revolutionize the computing world with inexpensive microprocessors. Things didn't exactly work out as planned, as the company never was able to match the hype. By 2006, the company had been reduced to suing for patent infringement, as it no longer was making any products. Basically, it was the classic story we've seen over and over again: a company fails in the market place, and then falls back on suing those who actually succeeded. Letting such companies sue seems to go against every concept of free market capitalism. It's letting the marketplace losers make a claim on the earnings of the marketplace winners.

Still, Transmeta was having some problems with its go-it-alone strategy, so now it comes as little surprise that it's sold off its patents to Nathan Myhrvold's patent hoarding monster, Intellectual Ventures, whose business model is very troubling to those of us who believe in letting companies actually innovate. Myhrvold has been squeezing tons of money out of companies to effectively immunize them from future lawsuits from the massive number of patents he's been acquiring. It's taking money out of bringing products to market, and giving it to those who have nothing to market. It's basically a multi-billion dollar example of a patent system gone wrong.

Filed Under: patents
Companies: intellectual ventures, transmeta

Investor Upset That Transmeta Isn't Solely Focused On Suing Companies For Patent Infringement

from the focus,-people,-focus! dept

Back in 2006, we noted that hyped-up Transmeta, the semiconductor startup that Linus Torvalds worked at for a while, had pretty much failed in the marketplace and was making a last ditch effort to sue companies for patent infringement. It was a pattern we had seen over and over again: a company that can't actually compete in the marketplace responds to its own misfortune by trying to drag down the company that did succeed, using patent infringement claims as the anchor. However, it appears that an investor in Transmeta is now upset that the company didn't take this "sue everyone who did a better job than us" strategy far enough. Specifically, Transmeta settled with Intel a few months after filing a patent infringement lawsuit, and the investor is upset that the company didn't fight it out for a higher return. So, now, he's hoping to buy out the rest of the firm, shut down the parts that are actually doing something and producing value, and instead just turn the whole company into a patent lawsuit machine. Just as Thomas Jefferson originally envisioned.

Filed Under: patents
Companies: transmeta