Allied Security Trust (AST) is an independent, not-for-profit cooperative that provides its members with a method of mitigating the risk of patent assertions and litigation.
Business
Each member contribute to the operating expense of the trust, and hold funds in escrow for the purchase of patents. Each member's escrow funds are used for the purchase of only those patents that they are interested in.
The members involved in the purchase are then licensed to the patents. After a certain period of time, the patents are sold or donated. This is known as a
catch and release
Catch and release is a practice within recreational fishing where after capture, often a fast measurement and weighing of the fish is performed, followed by posed photography as proof of the catch, and then the fish are unhooked and returned ...
strategy. AST does not litigate.
Members
Allied Security Trust public members in 2023, include
* Avaya
* Adobe
* Cisco
* Dolby
* Google
* IBM
* Intel
* Meta
* Microsoft
* Oracle
* Philips
* Salesforce
* ServiceNow
* Snap
* Sony
* Spotify
* Uber
* Verizon
Executives
*Russell Binns, Jr., CEO
[{{cite web, url=http://www.alliedsecuritytrust.com, title=Homepage - Allied Security Trust, website=Allied Security Trust, accessdate=15 October 2017]
*Kerry Hopkin, CFO
*Ray Strimaitis, VP, Corporate Development & Global Strategy
*Mihir Patel, VP, Technology
See also
*
PatentFreedom
*
Patent troll
*
RPX Corporation
RPX Corporation (Rational Patent EXchange) is an American provider of international risk management services for patents. The company was founded in March 2008, and is based in San Francisco. It was incorporated on July 15, 2008. By acquiring pat ...
*
Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network (OIN) is a company that acquires patents and licenses them royalty-free to its community members who, in turn, agree not to assert their own patents against Linux and Linux-related systems and applications.
History
The co ...
References
External links
Home pageIAM Magazine article comparing & contrasting AST with RPX, May/June 2010
Companies based in New York (state)
Defensive patent aggregation companies of the United States