Phone Scoop has an interesting post about patent trolls, mobile barcodes and Physical World Connection.
"a company called neomedia would constantly give me a hard time whenever i wrote about mobile barcodes (especially in Asia) because they claimed to own all the patents on this idea and swore that they did it first.
Neomedia is still around, and still making these same claims. But neomedia never made anything, they bought the intellectual property from cuecat (remember them?) and then put up a web page with examples of how their technology would work. Supposedly Neomedia finally has a working barcode reader now, but of course so does every phone manufacturer outside the US."
It's interesting to hear views and opinions on companies associated with the Physical World Connection.
This view seems to be more the standard than the exception.
5 comments:
Err... This is an an article about Qualcomm which mentions Neomedia. Not an article about Neomedia.
The article discusses patent trolling and how Qualcomm is buying up patents.
There is a big difference in buying patents around your core business (protection), and just using patents for a business model.
One key point in the story "Qualcomm owns all the patents on CDMA, now granted their founders actually invented CDMA and have used it in actual products since the beginning. so they are not squatting on this patent"
See the difference?
Digital Convergence, the company who brought the :CueCat to market, licensed NeoMedia’s patents for $100 million back in 2000. $10 million was collected by NeoMedia before Digital Convergence went out of business.
http://neom.com/press_releases/2000/20001019.jsp
NeoMedia filed these patents back in the mid 90’s and Digital Convergence needed NeoMedia’s intellectual property for the :CueCat.
The truth prevails.
Tee Tee Boy
That's not the issue. Where was THEIR invention?
"Digital Convergence needed NeoMedia’s intellectual property for the :CueCat."
p.s. Did they ever receive any of those funds from the licensing agreement?
As far as the "truth" goes, this is the real truth whether you choose to accept it is your option.
Truthfully, the license (which was never paid - contrary to the above statement) was in an effort to console Wall Street and prevent anything that would slow down an IPO.
This was NYC bankers pushing it, not a need to license technology. D:C's IP was stronger and older than NEOM's but they were both in the same space and the bankers did not want anything loose.
To also correct Scott's text above, NEOM does NOT own any bit of D:C IP to this day. They are two different portfolios.
Dave Mathews
Co-Founder of Digital Convergence & Inventor of the CueCat.
Post a Comment