"Catch and release" model is catching

Recall the recent flurry of media coverage over the "catch and release" model of Intellectual Ventures? [IPBiz:
Intellectual Ventures' "catch and release" gambit]

Allied Security Trust is doing a similar thing.

From Ars Technica:

Zemlin's comments about Microsoft are a response to a patent auction carried out by Microsoft to sell a number of patents that the company allegedly said were related to Linux. The patents, which were originally obtained by Microsoft from SGI, were sold to Allied Security Trust (AST), a patent-holding group that grants its members perpetual licenses before reselling the patents.

Zemlin suggests that Microsoft's intention was to surreptitiously slip the intellectual property to a patent troll that would then go after Linux companies. This tactic would allow Microsoft to launch an indirect assault against the open source operating system while largely insulating the company from retaliatory patent litigation by The Open Invention Network (OIN), a patent-holding group that uses its intellectual property portfolio to protect Linux. Zemlin says that the plot was thwarted, however, because "Microsoft got caught."

See also


"Coalition for Patent Fairness" morphs into Allied Security Trust?

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/07/brian-hinman-of-allied-security-trust.html