Company acquires patent to license or sue.
Publicly traded Acacia, which some would call a patent troll, has acquired a patent “relating to domain name redirection technology”.
I reached out to the company to find out the specific patent. But it turns out the company’s short, uninformative press release about the acquisition is all the company will disclose.
When Acacia acquires patents it actually enters into a contingency agreement with the patent holder to share revenue from suing or licensing the patents.
Because of this arrangement it’s difficult to figure out exactly which patent is in play. I know Sendori has a couple patents related to redirecting domains for monetization. Verizon has a patent for “Mobile communication device domain name system redirection”. Yet this could also be related to forwarding domain names for all we know.
This sort of thing is the reason companies like Go Daddy build up a big patent portfolio — it gives them something to defends themselves with if they’re ever sued.
Stay tuned…
Mike says
That’s sick.
I’ve been redirecting domains since 1996 making money sending the traffic directly to advertisers.
Scummy practices at best.
Steve M says
“This sort of thing is the reason companies like Go Daddy build up a big patent portfolio — it gives them something to defends themselves with if they’re ever sued.”
Except that such defenses don’t work against a companies like Acacia which doesn’t engage in the practice of anyone’s patents; since they’ve got nothing to be sued for doing.
It may be this recently issued Verizon patent: 7,958,258
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=%22domain+redirection%22&OS=%22domain+redirection%22&RS=%22domain+redirection%22
Adam says
Verizon selling to the trolls would just be icing on the cake wouldn’t it?
Bob Mountain says
I find it sad and disturbing that the US justice system allows these patent trolls to acquire IP with the sole intent of blackmailing legitimate operations with litigation. These companies add no value to business or society – disgusting. They are the personal injury lawyers of the business world.
Attila says
I am in the wrong business.
http://www.acaciaresearchgroup.com/patentportfolio.htm
Just take a look at their very generic patent portfolio.
Its no surprise companies these days are afraid to innovate anything as one small lawsuit can wipe them bankrupt.
Here in China they do not enforce IP as well as the states 🙂 Though maybe 5 or 10 years later, it could be very similar since China is a developing country…
Makes me think if this is the gold rush to register patents (in Chinese language) in China…