Friday, October 15, 2010

Intellectual Ventures to Webvention to ED Texas

Joe Mullin in a post titled NPE Makes Offer Some Companies Can Refuse discusses current litigation over US Patent 5,251,294, which was obtained by Webvention LLC from Intellectual Ventures [IV].

The Webvention website notes that the the prolific inventor of the '294, Dan Abelow, has had Harvard Business School/ Harvard University as clients. Gee, whatever happened to "plagiarize with pride"?

Zusha Elinson had written in December 2009 of IV deals:

The latest of these deals -- and only the second to become public -- was closed on Nov. 16. Public records show that on that day, the unusually named Ferrara Ethereal LLC assigned the rights of U.S. Patent 5,251,294, which is "directed to structures and methods for organizing, presenting and accessing information," to Webvention LLC, along with four related patents. Ferrara Ethereal is an Intellectual Ventures shell company, according to people familiar with the LLC.

And it certainly looks like Webvention is ready for action. The patent-holding company is headed by Todd Schmidt, whose last job was at ContentGuard, a company that actively licensed its IP. And Webvention just happens to be based in Marshall, Texas, smack-dab in the plaintiff-friendly confines of the Eastern District of Texas. Although it has yet to file any lawsuits, Webvention is set up to do just that.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home