Alan Moore writes on the
Mobile Patent Wars. Here are some interesting snippets from this post:
- The fact of the matter is that patents are all too often an after thought in many M&A process, RIM/Apple/Nokia/HTC have all been involved. Yet more multinationals are getting into patent wars, as we see today, using patents, to protect their competitive advantage.
- More than US$1.7 billion was spent in 2008 on mobile advertising, and this number is expected to grow to more than US$12 billion by 2013.
- More significantly, one in seven media minutes is spent with mobile already today.
So those that own patents in the following areas would have their fingers on the levers of this burgeoning market. Alan reports that the following sectors would be valuable:
- In-application advertising
- Message tagging advertising
- Mobile search advertising
- Direct marketing to mobile devices
- Social media and instant messaging
- Pay per action in mobile devices
- Advertising campaign optimization in mobile devices
Finally,
CVON is selling the world's fourth largest mobile advertising patent portfolio behind Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google. It consists of more than 300 patents and patent applications across 58 patent families. (Side note: where's Apple in this race??)
So acquiring this little lot would be the equivalent of swallowing a jar full of steroids in the mobile patent wars for any of the existing competitors, I assume??
