RPX Corporation is the first defensive patent aggregator. RPX acquires patent rights and provides them as a defensive patent aggregation for an annual membership fee to reduce technology companies’ patent risks and costs created by non-practicing entities (NPEs).

First Members
Cisco, IBM

Financing
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Charles Rivers Ventures

Market
NPEs acquire patents – as opposed to creating them through research and development – solely for the purpose of offensive licensing against operating companies.

In the last decade, NPEs have raised over $6 billion in private capital to acquire patents to use offensively against companies that manufacture and sell technology products and related services.  Offensively initiated lawsuits by NPEs grew nearly 300 percent during this period and now represent 16 percent of all patent litigation in the U.S., according to PatentFreedom.  The problem is likely to grow worse, as historical data suggest that patent litigation increases following an economic down-turn.

Service
RPX acquires patent rights and provides them as a defensive patent aggregation to members for an annual membership fee. The RPX Defensive Patent Aggregation does not require member involvement in acquisitions, and RPX will not enforce the patents it purchases.

Membership
RPX annual membership fees range from $35,000 to $4.9 million depending on the member company’s operating income.

Member Rights

• Covenant not to sue
• Term license
• Perpetual license to assets sold
• Defensive library
  
  

Portfolio
$40 million in acquisition value, 150 U.S. patents, 50 U.S. patent applications in mobile, Internet search, RFID

Founded
March 2008; San Francisco, CA

Management
RPX management has been responsible for more than $2 billion in patent transactions:

• John A. Amster, co-CEO, former Intellectual Ventures and Ocean Tomo executive
  
  
• Geoffrey T. Barker, co-CEO, founder of Cobalt Group, founder of Vigilos Inc., and former Intellectual Ventures executive
  
  
• Eran Zur, president, former Hoffman and Zur partner, and Lemelson Medical, Education & Research Foundation executive
  

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