Firm to buy up patents
A NEW COMPANY is launching with the intent of acquiring patents to shield technology companies from costly patent lawsuits.
RPX has dubbed itself a "defensive patent aggregator." The big idea is to keep them out of the hands of "patent trolls," or firms that obtain patents for the purpose of suing other companies for royalties or licensing fees.
It will make money by selling a membership which is between $35,000 to $4.9 million, to the patent licenses purchased by RPX.
According to the Wall Street Journal Cisco Systems and IBM have already signed up.
RPX is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Charles Rivers Ventures. Its two chief executives, John Amster and Geoffrey Barker, previously served as vice presidents of Intellectual Ventures, another company in the business of purchasing patents.
So far the company has bought 150 US patents and has submitted 60 patent applications worth a total of $40 million in areas including Internet search, radio frequency identification, and mobile technology.
We would have thought that if someone has technology that RPX has a patent for and is not a member could be effectively sued.
Still it might be better the troll you know. ยต
L'Inq
Cnet
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Is this like a patent protection racket.
Unlike patent trolls, who file and/or buy up patents and then robustly defend their "intellectual property" against infringers, RPX intends to, er, file and/or buy up patents and then, er, robustly defend its "intellectual property" against patent trolls.

So what exactly was the difference, again?
Just because you call something differently doesn't mean it isn't the exact same thing...

"membership" - "license fee" - so what is the difference really?

The American patent system is BROKEN.

What about the OIN (Open Invention Network)? They're the same sort of thing, have people like IBM as founders and Google and Oracle as licensees.

It's a bit more focused around Free/Open Source software though.
Erm, so they buy up patent so they can protect companies by.. milking them? Based on an italian model is it?
Protection racket, a invention that keeps on giving.
this is one of the funniest things i have read in a while. i think everyones' comments so far have pretty much been perfect.
I think the money would be better spent on mercenaries and hitmen to off the patent trolls directly. It'd probably be cheaper too.
How about the EU hiring a few good lawyers from the EU (!) who know the US patent sinkhole, pay them a decent salary, and then defend companies from the EU at no charge from US patent trolls. A few investigators who dig up all available s**t which the patent trolls produced in their lifes would be also useful to put the criminal justice system against the patent trolls., wouldn't it? But perhaps the pussies in the European Parliament and EC are not that innocent either, are they (software patents, patents on genes etc.)?