Intellectual Ventures - Patent and Technology Landscape Report

Abstract
Table of Contents

Intellectual Ventures LLC is a privately held company notable for being among the top five patent holders in the U.S.A. It has more than 35,000 intellectual property assets under its ownership in the USA and worldwide with a broad technological market coverage including agriculture, automotive, communications, computer hardware, construction, consumer electronics, ecommerce, energy, financial services, health technologies, information technology, life sciences, materials science, medical devices, nanotechnology, physical sciences, security, semiconductors, and software fields. Intellectual Ventures has acknowledged it intentionally withholds the true scope and nature of its IP portfolio. Its licensing transactions and interactions are protected by strict nondisclosure agreements, and the structure of its business activities makes it difficult to get a handle on the full extent of its activities. For example, our focus has identified more than 800 shell companies that Intellectual Ventures has used to conduct its intellectual property acquisitions, and it has taken considerable effort to identify these. The range and scope of its activities are so vast that it is difficult to conceptualize the reach of Intellectual Ventures. Intellectual Ventures saw $700 million in licensing revenue in the year 2010. The firm’s total licensing revenue to date amounts to roughly $2 billion.

Key findings:

The structure of the Intellectual Ventures network of operations makes it tremendously difficult to detect and trace the company’s activities. Intellectual Ventures has acknowledged that it uses shell companies for purchasing and holding patents, although it has not publicly identified the number of shells or their names. We identified more than 800 shell companies associated with Intellectual Ventures. And also IP activity based on publication year and priority year is observed and the trend shows that there is considerable growth. Citation analysis of assignees and technologies is carried out and the following results are recorded. Top cited patents list has also been furnished in the report.

This present report analyses consist of a brief introduction to the Shell companies. Detailed Class based taxonomy is also furnished. The report also consists of some key findings regarding Major shell company patents, IP activity over the years based on earliest priority year, publication year etc.

Table of Contents:

1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
2.1 Company Overview
2.2 Key Facts
2.3 Products and Services
2.4 Business model
2.5 Intellectual Ventures and Shell Companies
3. Shell companies search and Analysis
3.1. Shell companies: Search strategy
4. Classification of patents
5. Key findings
5.1 Top Cited Patents
5.2 Major Players
5.3 IP Activity
5.4 Geographical Activity
5.5 Major Shells
5.6 Top 20 inventors
5.7 Priority-year Wise IP Activity of Top 10 Technologies
6. Statistical Analysis
6.1 Forward Citation Patents
6.2 Mean Citations across different Technologies
6.3 Technology citation statistics
7. Taxonomy
8. Litigations
9. Conclusion
10. References
Appendix A: Control Patents
Appendix B: Relevant class codes and definitions
Appendix C: Concept Table
Appendix D: Search Strategy

List of Tables
Table 1: Top cited patents for Intellectual Ventures
Table 2: Top technologies and their key patents for Intellectual Ventures patent portfolio
Table 3: List of identified shell companies of Intellectual Ventures

List of Figures
Figure 1: Technology taxonomy for Intellectual Ventures
Figure 2: Extended technology taxonomy for Intellectual Ventures
Figure 3: Top 10 shell companies of Intellectual Ventures
Figure 4: Priority year wise IP activity of Intellectual Ventures
Figure 5: Publication year wise IP activity of Intellectual Ventures
Figure 6: Geographical distribution of Intellectual Ventures’ patents in major countries
Figure 7: Geographical distribution of Intellectual Ventures’ patents in minor countries
Figure 8: Key patents of Intellectual Ventures
Figure 9: Priority-year wise IP activity of Intellectual Ventures’ top 10 patent technologies