North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Verisign vs. ICANN

  • From: Dan Hollis
  • Date: Fri Sep 10 03:51:25 2004 
On Fri, 10 Sep 2004, Joe Rhett wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 09, 2004 at 04:01:46PM -0700, Dan Hollis wrote:
> > If the patent is strong enough, wouldnt some patent attorney be willing to 
> > defend it on a contingency basis?
> > With the potential $$ in a patent violation judgement against verisign, I 
> > would think attorneys would be all over it.
> Patent violation can be easily gathered, but the penalty is always based on
> the lost revenue, which must be documented and validated.
> In short, if you want to make money selling your patent to someone then you
> must have a valid business that loses money so that your lawsuit against
> them will have teeth.

So the attorney creates an IP holding company to which the patent is 
assigned, and the company offers to license the patent to Verisign. 
When Verisign refuses, they get sued for lost revenue.

There are companies whos entire revenue stream revolves around licensing 
patents / litigating. This is quite normal.

-Dan