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Patent trolls beware: Some of the tech industry's biggest names are banding together to run you out of court.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, tech giants Cisco, Google, Verizon and HP are working with other companies to form the Allied Security Trust, a group that will buy intellectual property assets before they can be purchased by patent-holding firms. Companies will pay around US$250,000 to join the trust and will each deposit $5 million into a joint pool to purchase future patents for the trust, The Journal reports.
The tech and telecom industries have both been plagued in recent years by several patent suits filed by patent-holding companies that do not actually produce any of the technology whose rights they own. Because these companies often acquire patents for technologies years before any such technology can feasibly come to market, critics refer to them as "patent trolls" who they say are sponging off the work of other companies.
The most prominent such case involved a patent-holding company named NTP that successfully sued BlackBerry maker Research in Motion for infringing upon its patents for e-mail-to-mobile device technology. Just one year after RIM agreed to pay NTP a US$612.5 million settlement, NTP proceeded to sue Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA for infringing upon five of the same patents.
Earlier this year, patent-holding firm Minerva Industries filed suit against 33 different companies on the same day that the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted it a patent for "mobile entertainment and communication devices" that have "a cellular or satellite telephone capable of wireless communication with the Internet." In other words, Minerva sued every company major company involved in the design, production or sales of smartphones, including RIM, Apple, Motorola, Nokia, AT&T Mobility, Alltel and Samsung. Two months prior to the Minerva suit, Canadian wireless network vendor Wi-LAN sued Apple, Dell, HP and 19 others for allegedly infringing on its Wi-Fi technology patents.
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Computerworld Live Podcast #97: The Future of Enterprise Networking 25/07/2008 09:45:36
This week CW Live chats with Mark Thompson, global sales and marketing manager for HP ProCurve, on the future of the enterprise networking. Mark discusses the trends we can expect to see in the near future and how the right infrastructure can ensure your enterprise network is secure. - +
Computerworld Live Podcast #96: Security at the Edge 11/06/2008 09:22:22
CW Live speaks with Amol Mitra, HP ProCurve Director of Marketing for Asia Pacific and Japan. Today's topic: how enterprises are starting to shift away from simply controlling security via server logins, firewalls and moving to more adaptive security frameworks. - +
Data Management Edition #10: Multi-Petascale Systems 02/05/2008 09:12:33
This week we look at sustainability and the development of multicore technologies to build multi-petascale systems. - +
IT Security Edition #11: How to poison the Storm botnet 01/05/2008 08:51:55
This week CW Live presents a case study on how to poison the notorious Storm botnet . Plus we take a look at Cisco's plans for Ironport. - +
IT Security Edition #10: Cyber-battles fought and won 24/04/2008 11:09:47
Vendors bow to end user pressure to improve product security, and we take a look at the latest concepts shaping the cyber-battlefield of the future.
F-Secure achieves excellent results in Internet security suite comparison 2008-10-10 14:37:00+10
M2M Connectivity announces the new Sierra Wireless MC8792V embedded module for 900 MHz 3G/HSPA networks 2008-10-10 08:51:00+10
Pitney Bowes MapInfo Launches New Version of AnySite 2008-10-10 05:58:00+10
IOGEAR Gears Up in Australia 2008-10-09 20:18:00+10
Internet Service Providers offer new unlimited Online Backup from F-Secure 2008-10-09 19:42:00+10
Still Sneaking In: The Threats Your Security Tools Aren't Telling You About
Web 2.0 applications are all the rage, offering us tremendous value when it comes to collaboration and communication. They also open us up to new kinds of attacks however, and can cause problems in keeping systems and data secure. Read on to learn about the new attack methods and how you can defend yourself and your business.
