Technicolor was a 20th century pioneer when it came to video. Now in the 21st century, facing some financial troubles, the outfit might be content to innovate less and patent troll more, evidenced by its raid on the likes of Apple, HTC and Samsung.
According to Bloomberg, Technicolor has a team of 220 people ripping apart every new phone and tablet, looking at any features that infringe on the company’s library of 40,000 video, audio and optical patents.
“We usually send manufacturers a big file, with photos of the guts of their products, pointing to where they’ve been using our technology without paying for it,” said Beatrix de Russe, a lawyer and executive vice president of intellectual property at Technicolor. “Once those images have sunk in, we can start negotiating.”
To be fair, Technicolor is looking for infringement of technologies they actually created (and not bought from some defunct company), and it favours licensing deals that are fair and amiable. But still, when such a legendary company has to resort to patent trolling to keep the business afloat, you can’t help but feel a little sad. [Bloomberg]