Verisign vs. ICANN

Fri Sep 10 08:54:49 UTC 2004

> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004, Joe Rhett wrote:
> > In short, if you want to make money selling your patent to someone then you
> > must have a valid business that loses money so that your lawsuit against
> > them will have teeth.

On Fri, Sep 10, 2004 at 12:46:07AM -0700, Dan Hollis wrote:
> So the attorney creates an IP holding company to which the patent is 
> assigned, and the company offers to license the patent to Verisign. 
> When Verisign refuses, they get sued for lost revenue.

The holding company must be making money from the patent to demonstrate the 
value of the loss.  It can't be a silent owner -- these have been fairly
routinely tossed out of court as meritless.

> There are companies whos entire revenue stream revolves around licensing 
> patents / litigating. This is quite normal.

Yes, but they use complicated techniques of licensing and subcompanies with
demonstratable revenue to achieve those goals.  It's not as simple as was
suggested here.

-- 
Joe Rhett
Senior Geek
Meer.net