Intellectual Ventures, the patent holding company run by former Microsoft technology chief Nathan Myhrvold, just announced a legal settlement with Olympus, the digital imaging and recording technology giant — the fourth company to resolve patent litigation with IV in the last two months.
With the settlement, Intellectual Ventures says Olympus becomes the first major digital imaging company to sign on as one of its customers.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures says Olympus has agreed to license “segments” of its patent portfolio and also join its intellectual property defense program, which lets companies use IV’s patents to fight infringement lawsuits and give themselves more leverage in patent negotiations.
IV is still pursuing a related patent case against Canon and another against Nikon.
The company says it now owns nearly 40,000 patents and patent applications in 50 areas of technology.
