An acquaitance said on his blog that he's flying to Scan Francisco to attend 
the SVOD 2009 conference. I got curious and went to look at the agenda:

http://www.svod.org/2009/agenda

At first, I thought that a summary of Dr. Pavel Pogodin's speech was a joke. 
Alas, I think he's serious.

=============
LATEST TRENDS IN PRIVATE EQUITY: PATENT LITIGATION AS AN INVESTMENT 
OPPORTUNITY

The real estate crisis has forced many investors to seek alternative 
investment options.  One very hot investment area is Intellectual Property. 
While most VCs are very well familiar with how to use Intellectual Property, 
such as patent applications, to enhance value of their portfolio start-up 
companies, a growing number of fund managers are eyeing new possibilities, 
including bankrolling high stakes patent litigations against large 
technology companies.  Patent litigation in the US has always been an 
extremely high stakes game, in which one third of the world market for 
products of any company may be taken away in a heartbeat by a single judge 
or twelve laymen jurors.

Faced with possibility of being literally shut down by an order of court, 
companies are willing to pay top dollar to settle patent infringement cases, 
as was Research in Motion paying whooping $612M to settle one such case. 
Thus, thoroughly thought out and competently executed patent litigation 
investment strategy can bring huge payoffs.

The presentation will provide an overview of patent litigation, discuss 
success and payoff statistics and, finally, address strategic considerations 
and various due diligence issues.

Dr. Pavel Pogodin, Partner, Sughrue Mion
=============

Cynical parasites.

Vitaliy 

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