Who?

Right.

Taurus is the Wisconsin affiliate of Texas-based Plutus IP LLC.

Who?

Right again, because they don’t make anything but lawsuits.

CNNMoney sums them up beautifully:

The group’s very name — Plutus is the mythical Greek god of wealth — evokes the riches that are stake in a business that wrings revenue from patent portfolios via licensing deals and settlements, usually achieved by threatening or filing lawsuits.

Here’s the way it works: A law firm buys up unused patents on the cheap, sits on them until somebody makes something similar, sues them, settles for a million or so, goes on to the next litigation. Nice little racket, huh?

Often these patents are arguably "low-quality" or "obvious" and as such, won’t hold up in court, but large companies, such as the four mentioned above are willing to settle for a small amount to save on legal costs.

The suit comes at an interesting time as the House of Representatives is expected to vote soon on the Patent Reform Act, proposed to address overly-litigious patent farmers.

Interestingly, most of the lawsuits are filed in patent-suit friendly, Marshall, Texas, says the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which counts Google, eBay, and Microsoft among its members.

According to the website:

The number of companies caught up in patent litigation is large and growing: for example, the 218 infringement actions filed in Marshall, Texas, during the 28 months from January 2004 through April 2006 named 856 defendants, including more than 600 separate companies (some companies were named in more than one action).

Earlier this week, Google expressed why patent reform was important on its Public Policy blog:

Low-quality patents and escalating legal costs are currently hurting the ability of U.S. companies to compete globally, and that in turn hurts U.S. workers and consumers. Without a modernized patent system, U.S. companies are at a competitive disadvantage, spending resources on unnecessary litigation and unwarranted licensing instead of on innovation.

Just a few weeks ago advertisers paid $2.5 million for a 30-second ad on the Super Bowl. Looks like some are trying to make that money back. Granted the commercials for sale through Google Video are vintage-commercials we knew and loved as kids-but some of these companies are still around.

Hang on. Let’s talk about the cool changes to Google Video and then get back to this. Google has added category tags-very YouTube-esque. This must have been what Larry Page was yelling about. Searchers who just want to browse videos can do so with the help of tags marked “Popular,” “Animation,” and “Educational,” among others. Sweet.

Now back to the commercial thing. Not all of them are for sale. There are “free” old commercials like the Reebok one where the guy about gets eaten by his sofa, the Burger King “let’s make fun of the Pope” commercial, and even a 1985 Commodore 128 advert

(Darn you 128! Always smirking on the TV at me, “oh, I see Santa brought you a Commodore 64. Guess your parents don’t’ really love you.” I’ll get you one of these days.)

But if you want to see Morris the Cat. It’ll run you a buck. If you want to see Lauren Hutton hock Dial Soap, that’s another dollar. Or how do you feel about a black-and-white 3 Musketeers spot? The commercials appear to be licensed through the Historic Films Archive.

Now it is totally understandable that the company that owns the rights to these ads charge a fee to use the clips for a televised program or some other enterprise usage. But I ain’t paying to see Morris the Cat again, especially if 9Lives Cat Food is still around. In fact, they should be paying Historic Films Archive or Google any time somebody views the promo.

So does this mean in the future if I link to 9Lives, Dial Soap, or 3 Musketeers, I owe somebody $3 for checking out those sites? I have an idea. I have a bridge I’d like to sell you, but you’ll have to give me a dollar every 30 seconds to hear about it.

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