Acacia Subsidiary Acquires 4 Patent Portfolios

“Acacia is rapidly becoming the leader in technology licensing and we continue to grow our base of future revenues by adding new patent portfolios,” commented Paul Ryan, Acacia CEO and President.

ABOUT ACACIA RESEARCH CORPORATION

Acacia Research Corporation’s subsidiaries partner with inventors and patent owners, license the patents to corporate users, and share the revenue. Acacia Research Corporation’s subsidiaries control over 200 patent portfolios, covering technologies used in a wide variety of industries.

Information about Acacia Research Corporation and its subsidiaries is available at www.acaciaresearchgroup.com and www.acaciaresearch.com.


Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based upon our current expectations and speak only as of the date hereof. Our ability to grow our future revenues by adding new patent portfolios, and our actual results may differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements as a result of various factors and uncertainties, including the recent economic slowdown affecting technology companies, the ability to successfully develop licensing programs and attract new business, rapid technological change in relevant markets, changes in demand for current and future intellectual property rights, legislative, regulatory and competitive developments addressing licensing and enforcement of patents and/or intellectual property in general, and general economic conditions. Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, recent and forthcoming Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, recent Current Reports on Forms 8-K and 8-K/A, and other SEC filings discuss some of the important risk factors that may affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason.
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Posted by Unknown at 21:48:00
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AOL to sell more than 800 patents to Microsoft

NEW YORK — Faltering Internet icon AOL was able to squeeze out more than $1 billion from Microsoft for a trove of about 800 patents in an auction, the latest sign of just how valuable such portfolios can be for the world’s biggest technology companies.

“There is a fight for market share occurring on multiple fronts — technology, patents, advertising,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Financial who covers Microsoft. “Microsoft, more so than others out there, has been [using] its patent portfolio as a way to generate license fees. This should strengthen that.”

Microsoft refused to say what the patents cover. Benchmark analyst Clayton Moran said they revolve around Internet technology, including advertising, search and mapping. This would help Microsoft go up against Google Inc., a big rival that is ahead of it in all three areas.

Patents have become a hot commodity in the high-tech industry in recent years. They’re useful both for attack — for suing competitors — and for defense — for warding off lawsuits with threats of countersuits.

Rising star Facebook, for instance, recently purchased 750 patents from IBM Corp., a move that likely helped the company defend itself after Yahoo Inc. accused it of violating 10 Yahoo patents. Facebook shot back with its own lawsuit, claiming Yahoo is violating 10 Facebook patents.

Software patents can have broad applications, and thousands of patents can apply to a complicated product like a cellphone. Google is buying phone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion, in large part, to get control of its patents.

AOL’s shares surged to their highest level in more than a year following the announcement. The company agreed to sell 800 of its patents and license others to Microsoft for about $1.06 billion in cash. The New York-based Web site developer and Internet access company said it plans to return some of the sale proceeds to its shareholders. After the sale, AOL said it should have about $15 per share of cash on hand.

Its stock rose $7.83, or 43 percent, to $26.25 in midday trading, adding more than $750 million to its market capitalization. Microsoft shares slipped 20 cents, to $31.32 amid a broader market decline.

AOL’s move signals that it’s listening to stockholders who are asking for more return on their investment. In February, one of AOL’s largest shareholders, an investment firm, said it will nominate candidates for the company’s board because it wasn’t doing enough to make money from its patents. AOL said at the time that it already had begun to look at ways to unlock patent value.

After the sale, AOL said it still will hold more than 300 patents and applications covering a variety of technologies, including advertising, search, content generation, social networking, mapping, multimedia, and security among others.

As part of the deal, AOL also received a license to use the patents it sold to Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp.

“The combined sale and licensing arrangement unlocks current dollar value for our shareholders and enables AOL to continue to aggressively execute on our strategy to create long-term shareholder value,” AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong said in a statement.

AOL said it will determine the best way to distribute a “significant portion” of the sale proceeds to shareholders before the sale closes, which is expected to happen by the end of this year.

AOL Inc. owns news sites like Huffington Post, Engadget and Techcrunch, but makes much of its money by providing dial-up Internet access.

AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson contributed to this story.

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Posted by Unknown at 22:36:00
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Specific Effects of Software Patents:

let us consider the particular case of software patents.

As a computer professional, I can certify that innovation is never atomic in the computer industry. On the contrary, computer software constantly and crucially depends on the ability to freely and quickly reuse, combine and evolve previous techniques.

In the age of interconnected computers, software plays an essential and ubiquitous role in the way computers, people, businesses, countries, etc., communicate with each other. Industrial property on software thus leads to monopoly lock-ins in the way people communicate. To computer professionals, software patents are as dreadful as if someone had patents on part of the English language (or whichever language they use). It prevents not only innovation, but the use of computers at all, and leads to proprietary systems from big monopolies that few can use, and that no one can innovate upon.

Patents induce such a technological stagnation in the computer industry that it is almost visible. Software engineers constantly curse the way they must conform to proprietary protocols that are not well documented (if at all), misdesigned (often with gross mistakes that peer review would have immediately eliminated), that they cannot improve upon, that exist in a wealth of gratuitously incompatible variants, and with which they must stay compatible for decades and decades. The field of computer development is thus filled with junk, that accumulates with time, and that no one has the right to clean, least he becomes incompatible with the others. Every patent on a successful software program or technique is an obstacle to the whole industry, that remains until it expires; even the holder, when he wants to improve his previous technique, finds himself faced with the inertia of a whole industry that adapted to his own junk, contorting either to interface to it, or to work around it.

Thus, the specific effect of patents in the software industry is to make software development and computer communication slower, more complex, more expensive. The amount of money, computer hardware, developer time, user time, etc., that is wasted and could be saved by removing protectionist barriers is so insanely high as to give vertigo to anyone.


Posted by Unknown at 01:42:00
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