(Remember Righthaven?) Apple may be using patent troll to do its legal dirty work

[Vehl]

Remember Righthaven?

Apple may be using a similar patent troll, according to investigative journalists.

Apple Made A Deal With The Devil (No, Worse: A Patent Troll)

Over the last two years, Apple has been engaged in vicious legal battles over smartphone patents, many of which are aimed at squelching (or squeezing money out of) manufacturers of devices running Android. And now, for some reason, it has given valuable patents to a patent troll — which is using them to sue many of the top technology companies in the world.

Meet Digitude Innovations, a firm based in Virginia that recently filed suit with the International Trade Commission alleging patent infringement by technology companies including RIM, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, and Nokia (note that Apple is not on this list). The ITC is a favorite for companies litigating over mobile phone patent disputes, as it can block the import of products long before a case has actually concluded.

Digitude was founded in 2010 and raised $50 million from Altitude Capital Partners, with aims to “acquire, aggregate, and license key technology areas within the consumer electronics and related technology fields in a patent consortium” — in other words, it buys up patents and then sues other companies until they settle and agree to pay licensing fees, because it’s generally less expensive than actually going to court.

In both cases, Apple transferred ownership of the patent to a company called Cliff Island LLC, which in turn transferred it to Digitude Innovations. In fact, Apple has transferred a dozen patents to Cliff Island LLC this year (though only two of these were named in this ITC suit).

more here
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/09/apple-made-a-deal-with-the-devil-no-worse-a-patent-troll/

Apple may be using patent troll to do its legal dirty work

It appears that Apple has made a deal with patent troll Digitude Innnovations to help the company's efforts to sue nearly every major mobile device maker. Digitude earlier this month launched one of its first legal attacks against Nokia, RIM, Motorola, HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony, and even Amazon, filing a patent infringement claim with the International Trade Commission. Conspicuously absent from that list is iPhone maker Apple, which until late November owned two of the patents being used to target "certain mobile devices" from its competitors.

As discovered by TechCrunch,Apple recently transferred ownership of a dozen patents to a shell company called Cliff Island LLC, which happens to share a New York office with the investment firm Altitude Capital Partners. Like Virginia-based Digitude, Altitude was founded by investor Robert Kramer.

According to a Forbes report, Kramer's Altitude has in the past funded efforts to extract large settlements from the likes of Microsoft, RIM, and eBay over patent disputes. Earlier this year, Kramer put up $50 million of Altitude's funds to found Digitude. The money helped fund its acquisition of over 500 "consumer electronics patents" to both license and litigate.
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As we noted recently, Apple has a tendency to use its intellectual property in ways that seem inconsistent. For instance, an Opera developer claims that Apple has a pattern of using patents to slow down the W3C's open standards process, while promoting open standards when it gives Apple leverage against its competitors. This situation with Digitude seems similar; Apple opposes the tactics of patent trolls when they come after iOS developers, but seems to support them if it aids its ongoing legal battle for dominance of the smartphone market.

more here
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/12/apple-may-be-using-patent-troll-to-do-its-legal-dirty-work.ars

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[Downwinder]

1. Put intellectual property on the tax rolls.

Use the value quoted in law suits.

[LAGC]

2. Yeah, no kidding. That would sure shut them up real quick. (n/t)

[Vehl]

3. +1

This should be passed as law, pronto.

Furthermore the practice of unloading patents to Patent troll(companies) should be banned..especially when done through shell companies set up for this purpose