HTC and Samsung Sign Massive Patent Agreement with Intellectual Ventures

Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC and Intellectual Ventures (IV) recently announced that they have signed a long-term licensing agreement and strategic alliance.

According to the agreement, HTC is receiving rights under IV's patent portfolio, which means that it will have access to IV's more than 30,000 patents to defend itself from potential litigation.

The new agreement goes both ways, so HTC is going to hand over its patent portfolio to Intellectual Ventures for a better management.

Intellectual Ventures was founded by Nathan Myhrvold, who is a former Microsoft CTO and Edward Jung in 2000. IV claims to have 30000 patents from various companies under its management, but it is also develops a small number of its own patents.

“HTC is one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile phone industry, and it understands the value of actively protecting its invention rights,” said Peter Detkin, founder and vice chairman, Intellectual Ventures.

“Given HTC's innovativeness in developing some of the industry's first smartphones and its continued development of some of the world's most advanced products, HTC is forward-thinking with its IP practices and is working with IV to mitigate its IP risk,” added Detkin.

Samsung has also signed an agreement with Intellectual Ventures last week, to protect itself from patent lawsuits.

“Consistent with Samsung’s commitment to innovation in its products and services offered to its customers worldwide, Samsung is pleased with the long-term agreement with Intellectual Ventures, which grants Samsung access to a broad and comprehensive IP portfolio under terms attractive to Samsung,” said Dr. Seungho Ahn, senior vice president and head of the IP Center, Samsung Electronics.

It looks like both handset manufacturers are making sure their new products won't be filed for patent infringement by patent aggressors like Apple and Microsoft.

At the moment both HTC and Samsung are involved in suits related to infringements on devices, architecture and hardware patents.