Pic: Electronic Arts
Joseph Siino, the head of Yahoo!’s IP Law Department since he was hired in 2005, has resigned. He says it has nothing to do with the 1,500 jobs Yahoo! just announced it was cutting, but it is the latest in an unbelievably long string of defections: as of June, 115 senior execs had left. According to law.com, he is “leaving to join the growing patent monetization industry.” Read: returning to patent trolling. Siino joined Yahoo! from Inflexion Point Strategy, a self-proclaimed “Intellectual Property Investment Bank” that was co-founded in 2004 by Skadden alum Ronald Laurie.
During his tenure, Yahoo! went from 100 to 1,000 patent applications per year. While it’s questionable whether they were actually innovating ten times as much, it’s still an impressive feat. Not only is it a massive logistical growth, but it shows that Siino was able to get the company at all levels to buy into an IP culture. Of course, the recent decision in In Re Bilski, which some praised as the first death knell for software patents, was probably going to make his job a whole lot harder, so that’s not a bad reason to leave either.
Siino has a history of jumping off sinking ships. He left Brobeck (remember them?) in April, 2002, less than a year before the firm shuttered. In fact, his departure was one of the final nails in the coffin.
Distasteful as some may find it, patent strategy, investment, and brokerage look to be the wave of the future. Is it time for non-IP lawyers to start boning up to get in on the ground floor?
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