Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Intellectual Ventures Sues Companies Over Patents

Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures, the patent firm headed by Nathan Myrhvold, has sued nine companies over patent infringement--the first set of lawsuits filed by the firm over its patent trove. According to Intellectual Ventures, it has filed patent infringement complaints in the U.S. District Court of Delaware against Check Point Software Technologies, McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro, Elpida Memory, and Hynix Semiconductor, Altera Corporation, Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, and Microsemi over various patents covering dynamic random access memory, security software, and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The firm said the lawsuits came after the firms ignored the firm's request for "good faith negotiations and discussions" over licensing its technology.