Fed up with patent holding companies suing them, a consortium of high-tech companies is taking a different approach: beat them to the punch. According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription), the business heavyweights behind the move include Google, Verizon, Cisco, and Hewlett-Packard. The premise is that the companies will put money into a holding company, to be called Allied Security Trust, that will buy up patents and then license them to consortium members for free.

The need for these measures should be apparent to anyone who has followed the intellectual property scene in recent years. No company seems safe from having an essential part of their services covered by someone else's patents, many of which seem to have never been put into use by their holders. One of the more egregious examples include a suit charging every cell phone provider under the sun with infringement for sending international text messages. Another fine example was provided by a company that sued for infringement, pocketed a settlement, and then sold the patent to a subsidiary in order to sue again.

These are all serious annoyances, but The Journal's report mentions a more dangerous example: the patent suit that almost brought down BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. At one point during the proceedings, the company was in danger of having to shut down, with potentially disastrous repercussions for it and its hordes of perpetually connected users.

The effort would mark a second front in the effort to cope with the hazards of intellectual property litigation, as most of the companies are members of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which is pushing for enactment of the Patent Reform Act. They also show up on the rolls of the Intellectual Property Owners Association.

This isn't the first venture of this sort, as some ex-Microsoft employees have founded a private patent licensing company for the same reasons. Still, the company's website notes, "Our focus is on inventing and investing in invention. While litigation is possible in any business, it is not a goal of IV [our company]." Their inability to rule litigation out clearly left these companies nervous.

The companies will undoubtedly have to keep pumping money into the holding trust in order for it to continue to purchase patents, but the fees for buying them from small inventors are unlikely to exceed those exchanged in a typical settlement; they're certainly less drastic than a threat to shut a company down. The key issue will be whether Allied Security Trust can identify key patents and purchase them ahead of the trolls.