Lawsuits Making You Hot Under the Collar? Jump in the Patent Pool

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has announced a two year pilot program with Via Licensing, to aid in the development of patent pools.  The collaboration will encourage intellectual property holders to establish joint licensing programs, through which they can offer licenses and royalty rates for all patents involved in the poll, Cnet News reported.

The roles the two companies will take on have also been defined.  Apparently, Via will facilitate negotiations with the participating companies, while the director of new business ventures for IEEE, Edward Rashba, stated his company’s role would be to “build awareness.”

To put the agreement in simple terms, Rashba said that “if you’re an implementer you have a one-stop shop to get all the licenses you need to develop your product.”  He also said, “We feel we have the opportunity to address some of the key challenges facing the technology industry.”

One of the main problems concerning the technology industry at the moment is the threat of costly patent lawsuits.  Last month we reported on RPX, which is a new company that buys patents with the intent of providing licenses to their clients.  Companies pay an annual fee, and several big names like IBM and Cisco Systems have already signed up.  As far as patent pools are concerned though, they have not proven to be a very common way of alleviating all of the licensing complications.  Only about a dozen high-profile patent pools exist, and eight of them are administered by Via.

Due to the difficulty and the time it takes to develop a patent pool, Rashba stated that the goal of the agreement is to form one patent poll by the end of two years.