By: Susan Decker
Red Hat Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. are giving away free patents to any startup that joins a group of more than 200 companies devoted to keeping its members and their patents out of court.
It’s a carrot to entice startup companies to join the LOT Network, a non-profit created by Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Canon Inc. four years ago to combat litigation by patent assertion companies, known derisively as “trolls,” that don’t make any products but seek royalties by challenging patents. By joining LOT, a company agrees that if they sell patents to such firms, all group members will have a free license to them.
“You’re binding yourself to the mast and saying ‘I’m not going to give in to the siren song of trolls,”’ said Ira Blumberg, vice president of intellectual property and litigation for Lenovo.
The goal is to avoid or at least limit a repeat of what happened when the dot.com bubble burst nearly two decades ago. That left firms in bankruptcy court with little of value other than their patents, which were sucked up by speculators in hopes they would be tickets to big bucks. It contributed to a 47 percent increase in the number of patent complaints filed in the U.S. from 2000 to 2010.
While the number of suits is declining, it remains an issue for companies of all sizes, said Patrick McBride, senior director of patents for the Raleigh, North Carolina-based software company Red Hat.
Read More >> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-10/tech-giants-offer-startups-free-patents-in-bid-to-foil-lawsuits
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