Intellectual Ventures
Nuro dreams of autonomous lattes, what is a metamaterial, Volvo takes the wheel
Welcome back to the TechCrunch transportation newsletter; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. We love the reader feedback. Keep it coming. Never heard of TechCrunch’s Transportation…
Gates-backed Lumotive upends lidar conventions using metamaterials
Pretty much every self-driving car on the road, not to mention many a robot and drone, uses lidar to sense its surroundings. But useful as lidar is, it also involves…
EarthNow promises real-time views of the whole planet from a new satellite constellation
A new space imaging startup called EarthNow aims to provide not just pictures of the planet on demand, but real-time video anywhere a client desires. Its ambition is matched only…
Home decorating gets a new AR toolkit thanks to Intellectual Ventures’ new incubator
Taking another step toward shedding its reputation as the tech industry’s most notorious patent troll, Intellectual Ventures is launching the first company from its incubator. The company’s ISF Incubator has…
Echodyne’s pocket-sized radar may be the next must-have tech for drones (and drone hunters)
Just because we live in an age of many sensors doesn’t mean we always have the right one for the job. One in particular we’ve been lacking is a radar…
Nest Buys Protection: Licenses Patents From Intellectual Ventures To Fight Honeywell, Others
This morning, intelligent thermostat company Nest struck a patent licensing deal with notorious patent hoarder Intellectual Ventures. There are a variety of reasons for the deal but the primary purpose…
Nathan Myhrvold, ex-MSFT CTO And Patent Powerbroker, Gobbles Up A Major Cookbook Award
Nathan Myhrvold, erstwhile Microsoft CTO and now patent powerbroker extraordinare, has hit the news this weekend, but it’s not for his latest licensing deal with a mobile phone maker, or for…
Troll The Troll
Never troll a troll, say men and women much wiser than moi. To them, I say no, in this case it’s perfectly fine to troll the troll. From the funny…
Patents and Unions: When Good Intentions Go Horribly Wrong
Watch me ruin your Sunday afternoon with one word. Ready? Here we go. Patents. This week on NBC’s Press:Here we talked about this topic most of our readers equate with…
Google On The Nortel Loss, Patents As Government-Granted Monopolies, And Plates Of Spaghetti
Back in early April, Kent Walker, Google’s Senior Vice President & General Counsel, wrote a post on the Google blog titled “Patents and innovation”. The reason behind the post was clear:…
Intellectual Ventures Sues A Slew Of Firms, Including HP And Dell, Over Patent Infringement
Intellectual Ventures is (again) suing a host of companies, including HP, Dell, Acer, Logitech, Kingston Technology, Best Buy and Walmart, over patent infringement. The firm, which has amassed a huge…
Patent Trolling Doesn't Pay: Intellectual Ventures Shows A Negative 73 Percent Return
You can always count on Hunch founder Chris Dixon for interesting Tweets. He just sent out this one: turns out patent trolling might not pay. Intellectual Ventures has negative 78%…
Is RPX's "Defensive Patent Aggregation" Simply Patent Extortion By Another Name?
Patent litigation is getting so bad that a new startup, RPX Corp. (aka, Rational Patent) is gearing up to help companies defend themselves specifically against patent trolls (organizations that buy…
Nathan Myhrvold's Patent Extortion Fund Is Reaping Hundreds Of Millions of Dollars
Don’t blame Nathan Myhrvold for taking advantage of the culture of rampant patent litigation in this country. He is only doing what large companies with vast patent portfolios such as…