Intellectual Ventures, the patent holding and technology development firm, is expanding its patent business into technology for housing construction through a new joint venture with the CollinsWoerman architectural firm.
The Innovative Building Technologies joint venture, announced this morning, is designed in part to provide patent protection to Sustainable Living Innovations, a company founded by CollinsWoerman in 2008.
The architecture firm’s approach involves constructing large portions of housing projects off-site to reduce costs, as the environmentally friendly buildings are assembled much faster at the project site.
IV says the joint venture will also clear the way to introduce the approach to construction overseas.
This is part of a broader effort by Intellectual Ventures to leverage its patent holdings and expertise to bring more products to market, as detailed this morning in a Bloomberg Businessweek piece, “Silicon Valley’s Most Hated Patent Troll Stops Suing and Starts Making.”
Intellectual Ventures, led by former Microsoft technology chief Nathan Myhrvold, recently laid off 140 employees, or 20 percent of its workforce, after struggling to raise capital from large tech companies for its latest intellectual property funds.