WASHINGTON \u2014 To its defenders, Intellectual Ventures is a revolutionary company unfairly viewed, in the words of its co-founder Peter N. Detkin, \u201cas the poster child of everything that is wrong with the patent system.\u201d To its critics, it is a protection racket otherwise known as a patent troll.<\/p>\n
Edith Ramirez, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, has urged a crackdown on the misuse of patents.<\/p>\n
Ms. Ramirez has not named names, but to many listeners, her description sounds a lot like Intellectual Ventures, the largest in a growing number of companies \u2014 more charitably called \u201cpatent assertion entities\u201d \u2014 that buy large portfolios of technology patents and use them to sue software designers, smartphone makers and the like.<\/p>\n
Co-founded by Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft, a prolific inventor and the author of a $625 cookbook called \u201cModernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking,\u201d Intellectual Ventures has vacuumed up 70,000 patents and related assets in the last 13 years. This year, the company has been busier than ever at the courthouse, filing 14 lawsuits so far \u2014 more than all the lawsuits it had previously filed since its founding in 2000. It also is expanding its fight beyond traditional technology companies. Eight of the 14 lawsuits are against banks, which Intellectual Ventures says infringed on patents that cover data encryption techniques, firewall protection systems or digital imaging. <\/p>\n