In an effort to support a lobbying push as the U.S. government cracks down on “patent trolls,” Intellectual Ventures is setting up an office in Washington D.C.
Russell Merbeth, formerly the VP of Government Affairs for Cricket Communications, is now with Intellectual Ventures working as the company’s Chief Policy Counsel. According to the Washington Post, he’ll be the first employee in the new D.C. office and will be hiring another employee in the near future.
Merbeth will by lobbying for issues like patent reform, intellectual property rights, taxation of patent royalties and corporate tax reform. Records show that the company spent more than $1 million last year in lobbying efforts and has shelled out another $370,000 in 2013.
The new office in D.C. opens as Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures has come under the Federal Trade Commission microscope. The government is set to launch an investigation of patent-holding firms that will require companies to answer questions about the legitimacy of their business. This comes after President Barack Obama made clear in June that he wants to investigate the practices these firms.
Intellectual Ventures, which is owned by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, has come under scrutiny recently for its practices following a This American Life report investigating the company’s actions. The company has acquired more than 70,000 patents during its 13-year history, and has earned more than $3 billion by licensing those patents to other companies who ”use them to make computer equipment, software, semiconductor devices, and a host of other products,” the company said in legal documents.
But the firm, which has yet to produce a blockbuster commercial success of its own, has become quite litigious in recent years. It has sued companies such as Toshiba, Canon, Symantec, AT&T, CenturyLink, Windstream, and most recently it took its patent fights to banks like Capital One, First National Bank of Omaha and PNC.
