Patents R Us: Information and Services for Inventors and Patent Owners
Defender of Patent Owner's Rights
Between the folly of representing oneself in a patent infringement lawsuit, and the daunting prospect of paying millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees and expenses for patent litigation, is where you find General Patent Corporation – the perfect solution for inventors, small businesses and other patent owners who have a valid, infringed patent, but lack the money required to go up against the big corporations that are often the infringers.
General Patent Corporation (or “GPC” as it is also known) specializes in contingency patent enforcement. Requiring no money upfront, GPC simply requests certain documents and other information about the patent and the alleged infringement, and then performs an initial evaluation for every potential client. This evaluation costs the patent owner nothing and can give a good indication of the strength of the patent infringement claim.
If General Patent decides to take the case, the patent owner doesn’t have to pay a penny upfront – not for fees, not even for travel or other incidental expenses. GPC only receives compensation when the case is settled or won.
And if the patent owner loses the case, General Patent doesn’t collect a dime. However, the company’s many years in the patent enforcement business – over 20 and counting – have given the GPC team a knack for both choosing strong cases and litigating them to a successful conclusion.
In fact, GPC has been in business longer than any other patent enforcement company. They may or may not have actually invented the concept of contingency patent enforcement, but they certainly perfected the concept of contingency patent licensing and enforcement. The company’s success story goes back to the 1980s, when GPC’s Chairman and CEO, Alexander Poltorak, founded a company called Rapitech Systems, Inc. Rapitech’s patented technology – the PCMCIA cards widely used in notebook computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s – were being used by other manufacturers without a license. Poltorak took it upon himself to enforce them and, in the process, developed a successful system of patent enforcement on contingency.
He initially founded Poltorak Associates, which later became General Patent Corporation. Rapitech’s patent portfolio was transferred to another company called Acticon Technologies LLC for the purposes of enforcement, and 26 lawsuits and 150 licenses later, the inventor was handsomely compensated for the infringement of his patents. As a result of the Acticon patent enforcement campaign, and the many patent enforcement campaigns that followed, GPC became the premier company providing contingency patent enforcement!
GPC has secured patent licenses for its clients from some of the biggest names in business, including IBM, Dell, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Motorola, Cingular Wireless, T-Mobile, Nokia, Samsung, Sony and many more.