Acacia Research
Acacia Research Corporation, founded in 1993, is an American company based in Irvine, California. Acacia partners with patent owners such as inventors and universities to license patents that are infringed. Roughly, 95% of the company's business involves licensing infringed patents on behalf of patent owners to some of the world's largest corporations through patent litigation.
Acacia creates a subsidiary company that acts as a special purpose entity for each set of patents that it enforces. The patent owner assigns the infringed patents to the subsidiary and the subsidiary then licenses the patents to companies who are infringing. Acacia and the patent owner split any revenues generated from licensing the patents on a 50/50 basis..
Since the year 2000, Acacia has generated $1.4 Billion in revenue from licensing patents and has paid out over $731 Million to inventors and other patent owners. The company has formed 233 known subsidiaries and has litigated 1,412 cases, four of which were not through a subsidiary..Controversies
Acacia has been referred to as a non-practicing entity because the company derives revenue from licenses and lawsuits rather than from building products.
