Thursday, September 18, 2008

CRV joins Kleiner Perkins in funding patent services firm RPX

By Mass High Tech Staff

Storied investment firms Charles River Ventures of Waltham and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers of Calif. have backed RPX Corp., a new patent acquisition services company based in San Francisco.

The exact nature of RPX’s service wasn’t disclosed, nor were details of the investments by the two VC firms. According to RPX officials, the company’s service is intended to aid technology and e-commerce firms in protecting themselves from intellectual property suits.

RPX said that more than 1,500 patent infringement lawsuits were filed in the United States in the first half of 2008, with average estimated litigation costs at approximately $4.5 million.

Founded in 1970, Charles River Ventures has approximately $2.1 billion under management. Among the companies in CRV’s portfolio are Cedar Point Communications Inc. of New Hampshire and Nantero Inc. of Woburn. CRV has had its share of successful tech industry exits, including the July 2007 IPO of Marlborough-based Netezza Corp. (NYSE: NZ) for $108 million, and the September 2007 sale of Lowell’s Acopia Networks Inc. for $210 million.

Since it was founded in 1972, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has backed entrepreneurs in more than 500 ventures, including AOL, Amazon.com, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Google, Sun Microsystems and Verisign. The firm has offices in Menlo Park, Calif.; Beijing, China; and Shanghai, China.