Intellectual Ventures in the Wall Street Journal

This blog has already reported on the activities of Intellectual Ventures in buying up patents. The Wall Street Journal had an article on them a few days ago which can be found here. In a post early in August we noted that we had seen no publicity surrounding patent licensing deals which had been made by Intellectual Ventures. The WSJ reports deals with Cisco and Verizon. Verizon's deal includes a stake in a patent investment fund.

Intellectual Ventures to raise USD 2.5 Billion

A lot has been written about Intellectual Ventures - the invention company - whom some see as a horrible patent "troll". IP Finance's friends over at IP Value Added recently compiled a report on the patents owned by IV and its myriad of subsidiaries.

Now reports suggest that IV may be raising a new investment fund with up to USD 2.5 Billion in capital (that's 2.5 Millards to those who prefer to speak Oxford English). IPVA's research suggested that to date IV had spent between USD 400 Million and USD 1 Billion on patent acquisitions. So it looks as if IV may be upping the game substantially. Why? Is this a reflection on a larger number of players entering into the marketplace - or the shear number of patent applications being filed these days.

Acacia Technologies - another regular acquirer of patent portfolios - regularly publishes press releases about its licensing deals. To date IP Finance has not yet seen anything similar from IV. Are the deals all confidential. If anyone has a tip or more information, we'd be delighted to hear from you.