Boston University Goes Big Game Hunting

All of the non-practicing entities who have been taking a beating over their business models lately must be enjoying this week's patent litigation developments.

Boston University filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple asserting an 18 year old invention. The same Boston University whose legal scholars published the oft cited and passionately embraced finding that NPE patent assertions are substantial, totaling about $29 billion accrued in 2011 alone. We are having a hard time keeping a straight face.

This latest development adds a new level of complexity for public policy people trying to figure out how to balance the impact of patent assertion and infringement law suits on operating companies by non-pracicing entities and the rights of patent owners to monetize their patent assets.  Universities are joining the leagues of organizations that don't manufacture anything but sue for patent infringement.   The potential paydays may be too big for university patent owners to ignore.

Read the latest post here.

The Shield Act and Troll Hunting.

The Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act proposes a loser pays framework for patent infringement lawsuits brought by patent assertion entities, aka patent trolls.  The PAE also needs to file a bond equal to the estimated cost of the legal fees when filing a lawsuit claiming infringement of one of their patents.

The new SHIELD ACT was reintroduced by Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR) in a rare show of bipartisan cooperation.  The bill received immediate support from the high tech blogosphere where the technical cognoscenti extolled the legislation's potentially huge impact on patent troll behavior.

(How much time is spent by Congressional staff sitting around coming up with acronyms?)

Congressman DeFazio, commenting on patent trolls stated, "They pad their pockets by buying patents on products they didn’t create and then suing the innovators who did the hard work and created the product."  Yeah, kill the evil patent troll.  Not so fast. There's a bit of intellectual property vertigo setting in here.

The trolls buy patents on products they didn't create and then sue the innovators.

The companies make products that cover inventions they didn't invent and are infringing and aren't paying royalties to the inventors who did the hard work and created the invention.

There doesn't seem to be any one wondering why these guys are infringing on some inventor's patent in the first place.  And the bill isn't addressing the real issue - why is it that the brightest guys and gals in the room can't find the patents they need to license when they create their products in the first place?

After all the cheering dies down and reality sets in the  Shield Act as currently crafted raises some nontrivial issues.

First its new protections kick in too late in the PAE enforcement campaign.  Most PAE campaigns are settled long before they get to court.  Business people targeted by a PAE campaign, the bulk mailing, indicia of extortion type, are faced with two choices: settle quickly at a low price, sign the non-disclosure, go home and take a shower and get back to business; or go to battle, spend a lot of money and management energy and hope you'll win someday.

For some business people the decision is pretty simple.  A legitimate infringement lawsuit fight can go on for three or four years while you wait for the USPTO to reexamine the patent, and wind through the rest of the legal process. Getting your money back isn't the same as not spending it in the first place. Business people have to ask them selves if they have the money and stomach for the fight? A lot do not.  Most don't have the guts of the folks from Newegg or the know-how to find the prior art to invalidate an overly broad or fuzzy patent.

Then there's the bond exclusion. The SHIELD Act excludes certain parties from the bond requirement when they file an infringement suit:

1) Original inventors, joint inventors, and the original assignee of the patent;
2) Entities that have made a substantial investment in exploitation of the patent through production or sale of a product covered by the patent; (this doesn't to protect operating entities that make products but doesn't state that seem the defendant has to own the patent they are "exploiting"); and
3) Technology transfer organizations whose primary purpose is to facilitate commercialization of technology developed by one or more institutions of higher education.

The original inventor/original assignee language is problematic.  The bill doesn't address what happens when one firm is acquired by another as part of the normal course of business. Would the patent portfolio owned by Chrysler become worthless when it transferred to Fiat as part of the purchase of the firm?  And what about all those A123 Systems battery patents that transferred to Wanxiang when they acquired the company in bankruptcy, are these patents no longer enforceable and free for anyone who now wants to make the same types of batteries to exploit? Will firms engaged in these types of transactions no longer be able to protect their intellectual property from infringement? The bill doesn't address asset sales when patents are sold separately as part of bankruptcy proceedings.  Does this preclude recovery of value from assets of a company in bankruptcy by rendering the patents unenforceable?

Is a patent less valid when it's not owned by the original inventor?  Does the transfer of the patent to a third party by the inventor or assignee, after all someone needs to actually transfer the patent before the PAE can sue anyone, mean the patent can't be enforced without having $1M to post a bond?

The technology transfer exemption may seem appropriate but universities file PAE-like enforcement lawsuits they just don't send out 10,000 letter first (at least not yet).  In December 2012, a nine member federal jury ordered Marvell Technology and its US operating subsidiary Marvell Semiconductor Inc. to pay $1.17 billion in damages to Carnegie Mellon University. Carnegie Mellon University sued Marvell (MRVL: NASDAQ) for infringement of two patents, 6,201,839 issued in 2001 and 6,438,180 granted in 2002.  Carnegie Mellon may be a technology transfer organization but they aren't making any products.

Acacia Research's stock took a 4% hit while analysts try to figure out the impact on its business model if the bill becomes law.  Most of the stock value prognosticators feel that by the time Acacia goes to court it usually has a very strong case and can easily afford the bond contemplated by the bill,  a buying opportunity for ACTG's stock.

Nice try.  It looks good for the Congressmen to stand up with their venture capital and entrepreneurial innovator constituents in a show of support against the evil troll but it doesn't do much for the vast majority of situations where the demand letter arrives and entrepreneurs need to decide if it's more cost effective to pay up and move on rather than to mount a fight and hope that you'll win and eventually get your legal fees back. The only thing that's going to fix the problem is better patents, better ways to get rid of the ridiculously overly broad fuzzy ones, and creation of information resources for new companies making new products to search for and find the patents they need to license when the license is cheap and the market is small.  It is better than waiting to build markets and create value for their shareholders and then wait for the letter to arrive and hope you get your money back.

The Patentista On Patent Privateers

Today's Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and others reported on the latest volley in the battle between Cisco Systems Inc. and the latest PAE to come to the fore - Innovatio IP Ventures LLC.  In a nutshell, Cicso accused Innovatio of racketeering and extortion for sending threatening licensing demand letters to 8,000 coffee chains, hotels, and other retailers that use Cisco, Netgear, or Motorola Solutions WiFi equipment. The list of threatening letter recipients is a veritable Who's Who in the hospitality, coffee, and retail business - Hyatt Corp, Marriott Hotels, Wyndam Hotels, Ramada, Best Western, Panera, Caribou, and many more.  The Patentista called to point out that this is par for the course in the patent troll business and that this might actually be a privateering deal.

So the folks who bought equipment from Cisco so their customers can read email while drinking a Latte are being asked to cough up some money because they are infringing Innovatio's patents.  If the folks who bought the WiFi equipment from Cisco are infringing the patents then the next group of infringers are the users of the WiFi equipment including the denizens of Laptopisan and those surfing the net while in their PJs at home. (According to Matthew McAndrews the lead counsel for Innovatio, “Innovatio has made a strategic and business judgment at this stage that it doesn’t intend to pursue [lawsuits on the basis of] residential use of WiFi,”

Cisco claimed Innovatio's practices were extortion but the Innovatio crew came back and said it was their right to aggressively pursue infringers of their legally issued patents.  Cisco wanted to make the whole thing go away because of the bad behavior on the part of Innovatio.  The Judge in the case said, "not so fast."

Judge Holderman ruled that Innovatio had the right to petition any department of the government including the court system and that protection extends to licensing demands made before a lawsuit.  So Innovatio wasn't engaging in racketeering by demanding licenses from these companies as a lead up to filing lawsuits.  It was close but not quite there...yet.  That first amendment Constitution thing came first.

The Patentista recalled that Niro, Haller & Niro, the law firm representing Innovatio, and Cisco have a long history recalling the earlier Troll Tracker blog matter where Niro put out a bounty looking for the identity of the blogger responsible for Troll Tracker only to find out that he was the head of IP for Cisco.  That was back in the early days of the troll business when things seemed a lot simpler.

The Patentista noted how easy it is with a little customer relationship management software, a good solid database of addresses, and several reams of high quality paper from Staples to crank out the demand letters pretty quickly and get the ball rolling.  Then consider that the settlement price of between $2,300 and $5,000 per defendant is about the price of the starter retainer and a couple of phone calls to your attorney when you get the letter so why not just pay up and move on.  It's a business model with very low start up costs and big rewards.  It may really be targeted at getting Cisco to pay up but when you go after the little guys first it looks like extortion.  (Going after the end customers first to get the attention of a product provider is a tactic straight from the Patent Troll 101 play book.)

It's also about those agreements that people sign.  They usually say that if you get hit with a patent lawsuit on the products you buy that you need to let the manufacturer of the product know and take the lead in the matter and assist in the defense.  This is a seemingly innocuous paragraph when you sign (click these days) that nobody pays much attention to until the package with the demand letter on nice stationary arrives.  Assisting in the defense could be costly however righteous it might be.  Paying up and being indemnified against future action for a $2,300 might be a better deal.

Either way, if you figure Innovatio sent 8,000 demand letters at $5,000 a piece to settle, Innovatio can pull in about $40,000,000 at the high end (zeros are for effect.)  Even if you only get half, that's $20M.  And who cares if the firms paying the money are being abused or are disgruntled and unhappy.  You have the money and can move on to your next victim.  Who cares if more people hate the patent system.  It's a nice pay day.

The Patentista suspects that this might be a privateering deal.  Most of the patents were transferred from Broadcom to Innovatio.  Maybe they commissioned Innovatio as their privateer to wring the last bit of revenue from these assets.

What you ask is a patent privateer?  It's a new species of patent monetizer.  The term patent privateer is used to describe special purpose business entities set up by large practicing entities, usually surreptitiously, for the sole purpose of monetizing the patent assets.  There are of lots of reasons why the patent privateer business model is attractive.  Here are a few.

It's easier to have someone else litigate your patents then to do it yourself.

It keeps the funds allocated for patent monetization separate from traditional operating expenses.

It creates plausible deniability in a marketplace where patent litigation seems to violate the marketplace's sense of fair play or when moving against a competitor directly is unsavory.

It creates an uncorrelated asset - an asset not directly tied to the price of a firm's stock - sometimes when the risk associated with the likelihood of success is low or unknown an uncorrelated asset is good.  It becomes a correlated asset if thing go well and there are nice revenue flows back into the practicing entity (especially when such a flow of cash is beneficial for quarterly results reporting.)

It separates corporate assets of the practicing entity and the annoying cross-licensing discussion separate from the monetization piece by eliminating counter suits and all that nasty patent licensing stuff that goes on when one practicing entity has to deal with another.  It can also be helpful by annoying licensing agreements in the first place when you are no longer a big player in the marketplace where the patents apply.

It lets the monetizing entity hide in plain sight during the cease and desist early action phase of the program until they hit a serious adversary who knows to ask the court to determine the material ownership of the entity - basically who owns the LLC and where the funds to support the operation are coming from.  It gives cover until someone gets a patent attorney smart enough to figure out who is behind the PAE.

And it provides better visuals.  The privateer pirate model with its skull and crossbones has such better optics than the drooling patent troll.  Or as Mr McAndrews, the lead counsel for Innovatio pointed out, theirs is a systematic campaign.  "This is not a seat of the pants, fly-by-night shakedown."  (It's a more sophisticated shakedown.)

Maybe Broadcom Corporation wanted to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the patents and decided to let Innovatio take a shot at it.  Either way the decision in favor of Innovatio means that the bulk mailing of demand letters and the patent troll business model is alive and well and will live to fight another day.

An New Indicia of Extortion

Here is the latest from our Indicia of Extortion collection, brought to you via Ars Technica.

Newegg, Inc. won its patent suit against non-practicing entity, Soverain on appeal.  Soverain claimed it owned the patent for the electronic shopping cart.  The Ars Technica article includes the details on the defendants, just about every major e-commerce player who sells products on the internet.

Newegg's Chief Legal Counsel, Lee Cheng's interview in the Ars Technica article offered insight into Newegg's commitment to follow the case through all the way to the end based on their well-founded belief that their products didn't infringe Soverain's patents and that Newegg didn't owe royalties on prior and future sales.  Mr. Cheng note that, "It's part of our duty as a good corporate citizen to try to accelerate the rationalization of patent law."  He is to be commended.  It's easy to say the patent system is broke.  It's much harder to do something about it especially when it would have been cheaper to just pay up, pass the 1% royalty fee to your customers and move on.

And when commenting on the submarine patent nature of patent trolls, where patent holders lie beneath the surface for long periods of time, usually while entrepreneurs create markets for products using patented technology and then do the pop-up and pay-up by suing the now profitable company for royalties, Mr. Cheng added,

"It's actually surprising how quickly people forget what Lemelson did. [referring to Jerome Lemelson, an infamous patent troll who used so-called "submarine patents" to make billions in licensing fees.] This activity is very similar. Trolls right now "submarine" as well. They use timing, like he used timing... Then they pop up and say, "Hello, surprise! Give us your money or we will shut you down!" Screw them. Seriously, screw them. You can quote me on that."

The Court's decision on Soverain Software v. Newegg, Inc. is an interesting read because it provides an accessible example of a patent infringement decision based on obviousness and the scope of prior art.  It is easier to understand than many other more technical obviousness claims because the technology is understandable to anyone who has shopped over the internet and used an e-commerce shopping cart.  If you are trying to wrap you head around how obviousness works, read the decision.

The folks at a long list of America's top retailers and e-commerce giants are sleeping easier night.  Tomorrow they should be calling their IT folks and telling them to check out Newegg the next time they need laptops, keyboards, software or a host of any other products and to have fun clicking Add to Cart.

Update - February 11, 2012:  Mr. Cheng provided comments to the Federal Trade Commission on the impact of patent trolls on Newegg's business.  The comments, available here, provide insight into the complex and nuanced impact that patent assertion entities have on Newegg's business.  The comments are thoughtful and highlight the complexity of the issues.

Patent Alphabet Soup - FTC, DOJ, PAE, NPE

DOJ and FTC to discuss PAEs aka NPEs.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice will host a one-day event on Monday, December 10, 2012 in the FTC Conference Center to explore the impact of patent assertion entity (PAE) activities on innovation and competition and the implications for antitrust enforcement and policy. FTC differentiates between PAEs and non-practicing entities NPEs such as universities, hospitals, and post-doctoral research organizations.  Panelists for the workshop will include academics, economists, industry representatives, and private attorneys.   The agenda can be viewed here.

According to the Wall Street Journal, DOJ and FTC is looking at, specialized patent-holding companies as part of a broad review of how holders of patents use them as strategic weapons against competitors. In particular, the agencies have expressed concern about companies that make aggressive legal claims based on patents that are part of industry technology standards. Antitrust enforcers also are interested in mergers or acquisitions that result in large transfers of patents.  Federal regulators are grappling with the changing face of the patent business. Nowadays the specialized patent company that tries to wrest royalties from a big technology company might not be an independent enterprise. Rather, it might be the creation of other big companies.

The workshop will provide interesting insight into the current mindset within the anti-trust and consumer protection communities on the issues surrounding the business practices and economic impact of patent assertion entities (non-practicing entities like universities are apparently off the hook here.)

Indicia of Extortion — filing nearly identical patent infringement complaints against a plethora of diverse defendants where the plaintiff follows each filing with a demand for a quick settlement at a price far lower than the cost to defend the litigation. The term was used by Judge Lourie in the CAFC decision in Eon-Net LP v. Flagstar Bancorp.

Going on a Troll Hunt - The Study

First, unlike many of the "patent system is broken" prognosticators who foresee the death of innovation due to perceived innovation stifling and other nefarious activities of patent trolls, the pejorative term for non-practicing entities, Way Better Patents doesn't see impending invention doom.  What we see is a significant case of the economic impacts of asymmetric information.  Some organizations, practicing and non-practicing, benefit from having an asymmetric information advantage.  They know their way around the patent system.  They tend to sit on the "we're holding all the cards side" of the patent licensing negotiation and IP strategy negotiation while the rest of us don't have their patent picking or enforcement prowess.  This is not a crime but an operational reality in the patentsphere.  Or put another way, trolls are patent smart.

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) (P.L. 112-29) mandated the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study on the consequences of patent litigation by non-practicing entities (NPEs) or patent assertion entities.

GAO issued a a Request for Quote for that study back in July 2012.  This looks like part of a larger 20 year study defined in the law.

The definition in play for the study says, "while the term NPE is not defined in the law, it generally refers to a wide spectrum of entities that own and assert patents but do not practice or produce (i.e. design, manufacture or distribute) products using the patented technologies."  In lots of industries these definitions are blurred by many complex business models and structures where practice and produce have many definitions.  Some of the largest NPEs are US and post-doctorate research organizations - they invent and patent but they rarely product the inventions they create.   They don't seem very trollish but we digress.

According to the RFQ GAO is going to buy three specific things:

One — A Patent Litigation Database
Access to a complete database of all patent infringement law suits. GAO wants to collect data on the volume of recent patent infringement litigation in the all 94 federal district courts from 2001 through 2011 (even though there are places in their RFQ that say "and the present" which implies 2012 cases as well. GAO wants access to all of the patent infringement cases filed in the International Trade Commission going back to 2001 as well. The database must ensure that all court filings and documents associated with a particular case are linked to that case and are not counted as separate events (i.e. procedural events, transfers of venue, etc.).

GAO want all suits including patent marking cases, trademark and declaratory judgement cases (cases of non-infringement, invalidity, or unenforceability) as part of the patent litigation cases.  (The presence of trademark cases seems a little odd here but we wanted to make sure that it was clear we didn't make this up.)  GAO wants the capability to slice and dice the cases by federal district, judge, case outcome and patent class. A surprising addition - actually trying to figure out what the technology in the case involves. It will be interesting to see how they define the different areas of the technology. Since many non-practicing entities use the US classification to determine the tranche (domain) for licensing fee calculation.

Oh, and the contractor is supposed to demonstrate to GAO that it has methods for ensuring that data are complete and free from errors. (Good luck with that free of errors one.)

Two — A Random Sample
Then the contractor is supposed to generate random sample of 100 patent infringement cases per year from the database for cases filed each year from 2007-2011. It looks like the vendor needs to extract that set and deliver the sample to GAO who will retain ownership of the sample. Depending on membership in the random sample will directly impact the outcome of the study.

Three — An Analysis
Then comes the analysis. The contractor will then identify the key characteristics of the litigants.  GAO expects, "For the sample of 100 cases per year, contractor shall provide an objective and auditable framework for characterizing the extent to which infringement claimants (patent owners) practice, or make products related to, the patents they are asserting." (Practice what? Plenty of firms that own patents practice licensing too.) It looks like GAO is going to have to have a framework of some kind to deal with the continuum of "practice" because just like Intellectual Ventures and GE sometimes a firm is an inventor and sometimes it's  licensee and at other times it is a NPE.

GAO will approve the framework methodology before making the contract award. (Another sign that GAO knows who will be doing the work since most government contractors won't bid on something unless the scope of work is defined.)

"Contractor shall employ legal analysts to identify key infringement claimant (patent owner) characteristics. Contractor shall analyze court documents, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, corporate websites, and other sources of data as necessary. Contractor must employ expertise in patent infringement litigation to identify evidence that is relevant to objectively characterizing litigants involved in each case. Contractor shall record these characteristics for each case in a Microsoft Excel file. GAO needs to be able to trace all characteristics back to supporting documents.

"Contractor's legal analysts shall compile the characteristics into a Microsoft Excel file and then have at least one other analyst confirm each characterization according to the objective framework." Lots of billable hours on this task.
For each suit in the sample, the contractor shall also report:

• Patent and Trademark Office patent classifications and patent numbers (Which ones - the USPC origin and cross references, the IPC? or the new Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) symbols
• Number of Defendants per case
• Venue (which federal district court the suit was ultimately heard in)
• Characteristics of the alleged infringer (defendant) as per the above auditable and objective framework
• Outcome – Categories to be reported (with quotes from court records):
• i. whether the case settled and how long it took to settle (e.g. X months after litigation filed)
• ii. whether attorney fees or costs were awarded to one side;
• iii. case outcomes
• iv. whether there were Rule 11 (civil procedure) sanctions
• v. whether an injunction was granted
• vi. whether damages were awarded and how much

There are some other interesting gems in the RFQ:

The contractor has to have this work done by December 31, 2012. The expected award date is September 3 according to FedBiz Ops.

GAO wants the access to the data within two weeks of contract award. There were only two questions posed by potential contractors - not a sign that GAO is likely to get a broad range of responses from interested firms. (Either the fix is in or the data is coming from one of your favorite litigation reporting systems.  The RFQ and the very short response time implies that they know who they want to do the study.)

What is also interesting here is what is missing from the mix.

Patent litigation is generally a tool. File the law suit when the potential infringer doesn't want to talk then negotiate and settle when the specter of a multi-million dollar lawsuit looms. How will this be accounted for? How will the outcomes be described when most are covered by Non-Disclosure Agreements?

There doesn't seem to be any attempt to determine how the NPE acquired the patent. Was the patent acquired from a practicing entity who is working with the NPE on monetizing their intellectual property assets. (See the discussion on 'practice' above.) Firms like Acacia Research have a wide range of agreements with practicing entities to maximize the value of the practicing entities intellectual property. These relationships are important in understanding the true nature of the litigation and who the real players are. Just because you don't manufacture stuff doesn't mean you don't work for someone who does. Counting these as solely evil troll litigation seems to be a misrepresentation of the nature of the action and the business models.

How will the contractor determine the "real parties in interest"?

How will GAO determine the universe of NPEs and patent assertion entities? Many firms engaged in this work establish separate entities for each transaction not unlike real estate developers who want all their projects in separate business entities. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for these types of entities — and plenty that are solely for the purpose of obfuscating ownership.

How will GAO evaluate the age of the patents being enforced? The Boston University study on NPEs which has gained urban legend status in the patensphere  cited shows the average age of a patent in NPE litigation is over eight years old.

What about considering how many of these cases required Special Masters of some kind because of the complexity of the underlying inventions and science that form the foundation of the case?

What about licensing pools, such as the MPEG Licensing Authority that enforced the intellectual property rights of its members? It is clearly a non-practicing entity but it represents a very large universe of practicing entities.

How will publicly traded patent aggregators like RPX and firms like Acacia Research be evaluated. Both have different models for creating shareholder value (assuming that creation of shareholder value is still a good thing.)

What about taking into consideration the difference between highly structured industries like pharma and biomedical inventions (the chemical domain) versus the world of software, business methods and all things related to electrical and communication patents?

And finally, how will GAO combat patent urban legend like — Intellectual Ventures (IV) owns 40,000 patents — (at the time of this writing, there is a crowdsourced request for money out there looking to raise $80,000 to develop a comprehensive view of the IV patents; there are over 250,000 patents covering smartphones (Google's general counsel seemed to be counting all the claims in all the patents to come up with the total; that there have been more than 40,000 in troll related litigation; NPEs cost firms billions of dollars each year (see the Boston University analysis on that one) and finally, trolls hinder innovation.

This is clearly a difficult and challenging task. Hopefully the research and analysis will be equally compelling.  According to the RFQ the task is to be complete by December 31, 2012.  GAO will need to create and publish it's report after that.

Let the troll hunt begin.

Get the Screen Shots

Drew Curtis, the CEO of Fark.com had the unpleasant experience of being sued for patent infringement by Gooseberry Natural Resources - a patent troll with no employees and an office in a strip mall in LA.

Mr. Curtis abandoned the standard "settle for a little as possible as quickly as possible" strategy of resolving patent infringement law suits and instead invoked the "show me where I'm infringing" strategy.  Get the proof of infringement.  Fight infringement rather than fighting the patent.  By not wasting time and money trying to have the patent invalidated, he focused instead on making the NPE prove infringement.

His TED Talk is a refreshing look at someone who chose to remove the cover of darkness from a patent infringement suit and settlement.  Regardless of your feelings toward patent assertion entities, everyone in the patentsphere benefits from moving the discussion of what is infringe and what isn't into the sunlight and away from platitudes like "the patent system if broken."

An Wang - Patent Troll - The Reading List

Next on the Inventions, Inventors, Innovation and IP Reading List reading list is the story of one of the great American inventors, a savvy businessman who sold the rights to one of the seminal inventions in core memory to fund his new research and development and then went on to build one of the top R&D and product organizations.  Sometimes he was an NPE and most of the time he was a practicing entity.

An Wang was received the Medal of Liberty awarded to distinguished naturalized citizens, Wang started the electronics laboratories that bear his name as a one-man shop six years after his arrival in 1945 from China at age 25 and built it into a multinational company.

With the "patent system is broken" being the tag line of lots of commentary on patents, patent litigation, and calls for making it illegal for non-practicing entities, the pejorative patent trolls, to enforce their patents, Lessons: An Autobiography give the reader insight into how patents, a brilliant leader, and a great team can change the way we work.

Lessons: An Autobiography by An Wang — Dr. Wang sold his patent for core memory to IBM to fund WANG Laboratories and set off an inventive juggernaut. Like other great inventors he started as a non-practicing entity and went on to build one of the largest "practicing entities" of the 1980s.

(We added the link to buy the books at Amazon for two reasons - the pictures of the covers look good and if you buy one of the books from the link on, Amazon pays us a little change.  This helps us keep our product cost low. )