The news this week that Lycos is looking to dispose of some of its patents afforded tech bloggers the opportunity to remind their readers that yes, one of the iconic internet search brands of the before-Google era still exits. For those in the patent community the reaction may have been equally mystified – something along the lines of, they still have anything worth selling? And, have they seen the market out there, particularly for software patents?
Several of the patents have hundreds of forward citations which gives some indication that they are good quality. According to Maulin Shah of EnvisionIP who has published a quick analysis of the portfolio, one of the patents related to relevance ranking in internet search has a “staggering” 566 citations. So maybe there will be some buyers even in a post-Alice world. The patent deals market could certainly do with a shot in the arm.
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