Teknovis

A few weeks ago I read that AOL was going to sell its 800 patents, and that it hoped to raise about $1 billion. The article I read is AOL may sell off some of its 800 patents for cash. At the time I thought that it was very wishful thinking by AOL.

This evening I am eating humble pie :) AOL has sold all of its patents to Microsoft for $1.1 billion according to AOL Sells 800 Patents For $1.1 Billion To Microsoft [Memo To Staff]! This equates to $1,375,000 per patent!

It will be very interesting to see what Microsoft does with these patents next. Is it intending to go an an offensive against a competitor, or is it building up its own defence?

Tags: AOL, Microsoft

I am a big supporter of standards for technology, and I was reading some specifications from one of the many standards organisations today. I suspect, perhaps incorrectly, that there are many Irish companies involved in international standards organisations. I know that standards participation by Irish companies is something that Enterprise Ireland encourages.

Therefore, I decided to write a series of articles listing the Irish companies that are involved in international standards organisations that relate to information communication technologies. I will also include non-Irish companies that have technical operations in Ireland. (It would be nice if I could replicate this for the entire EU, but I do not have the time for that at the moment.)

I am going to start this series by looking at the W3C, because it is probably the prominent standards organisation in relation to the Internet. I am basing these lists on the online membership list.

The Irish companies that are currently members are:

• Afilias
• ChangingWorlds (but see Amdocs to Acquire ChangingWorlds)
• Cibenix
• DERI (this is a Science Foundation Ireland funded research group that I should have included in Science Foundation Ireland Funded Research Groups)
• IONA
• MobileAware
• mTLD Top Level Domain (also known as dotMobi. I think that it might just use Ireland as an address for tax purposes)
• TSSG (This is a research group. It appears to be responsible for start-up companies that are also involved in the W3C such as Nubiq)
• Voxpilot

The non-Irish companies that have technical operations in Ireland that are currently members are:

• Adobe
• Alcatel-Lucent
• AOL
• Apple
• Avaya
• Betfair
• Cisco
• EDS
• EMC Corporation
• Ericsson
• Google
• HP
• Hutchison 3G (also known as Three)
• IBM
• Intel
• Microsoft
• Motorola
• Nortel
• Oracle
• SAP
• Siemens
• Sun
• Vodafone

The Irish companies that appear to be members based on their own web pages even though they are not listed by the W3C:

• Segala

That took me longer than I expected!

Tags: Adobe, Afilias, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Apple, Avaya, Betfair, ChangingWorlds, Cibenix, Cisco, DERI, dotMobi, EDS, EMC Corporation, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, IONA, Ireland, Microsoft, MobileAware, Motorola, Nortel, Nubiq, Oracle, SAP, Science Foundation Ireland, Segala, Siemens, Sun, Three, TSSG, Vodafone, Voxpilot, W3C