Digital patents are still all the rage. Microsoft, which has filed for more than 3,000 patents this year alone, wants to pad its intellectual property portfolio to boost earnings and defend its market positions. IBM, which already owns some 40,000 patents, more than any other company in the world, pockets $2 billion a year from patent licenses and brandishes them for cross-licensing deals. Hewlett-Packard, Intel and other top tech vendors are heavily vested in IP licensing as well. Some lesser companies do little more than traffic in intellectual property. Acacia Research, for one, increased revenue more than 40,000 percent between 2000 and 2004 by acquiring patents and collecting royalties on everything from video transmission to bar-code technology.
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