I am not a huge fan of SVP (Sue via Patent) and here is another example. Google's new IM / VoIP softphone is apparently using protected technology and is now being sued for patent infringment. Om has all the details and tips his hat at Rich.
Personally this issue really pisses me off. Patents were meant to protect companies from having their technology and secret sauce from being ripped off. To see that some companies have come up with some crafty way of manipulating these laws makes me sick.
It seems to me that most of these patent companies operate as a shell, as to not be sued themselves. If they did operate and provide service or build product they would most likely be violating many patents held by some of the companies they are going after. Instead these parasites hitch a ride sucking the lifeblood from those who ARE making a difference.
Go and build something already, make your own revenue, employ some engineers and contribute back to the economy of your country!
If you read this article it is clear that RTI holds patents and has successfully enforced them on multiple occaisions. Isn't this exactly the right that you are defending? It might seem more 'righteous' to build products, but 'licensing 'is also a perfectly acceptable way to exploit intellectual property. Isn't the right to choose what to do with IP the perogative of its owners?
The lesson here is for companies to invest time and effort in researching 'prior art' to ensure that money, effort and time they invest in proprietary product development is likely to be uncontested and provide a reasonable pathway to ROI.
It's not unusual for patents filed by creators of IP to be sold to companies that specialize in the exploitation of patent infringement litigation, licensing, and damage recovery.
That does not make the IP any less genuine. The original inventors may be using that particular IP in some instantiation, but simply felt more comfortable in the technology arena than the patent litigation arena.
The "shell" company exists solely to exploit the patent. Having, perhaps, paid good money for the right to exploit the patent, the shell company should be tenacious in extracting licensing fees and damages from the patent - validating the original invention. This activity protects the little guy inventor from the well funded mega-corporations such as Google or Microsoft.
Ideas - patents - are valuable and well capitalized companies that exploit ideas should be required to license the ideas of others. Penalizing the inventor who cannot afford to instantiate an idea does not make sense.