A key lawyer executing BlackBerry Ltd’s patent licensing technique has left the corporate, the second latest departure from the crew tasked with being profitable from the Canadian firm’s mental property.
Victor Schubert, who was a licensing director for BlackBerry, informed Reuters in a quick LinkedIn message that he was not with the corporate. He didn’t say when he left or why.
Monetizing the corporate’s mental property is a key a part of Chief Government John Chen’s plan for turning across the firm whose revenues have declined for six straight years as gross sales of its as soon as ubiquitous smartphones have tumbled.
Firm representatives didn’t reply to requests for touch upon Schubert. Two switchboard operators on the Canadian firm mentioned his title was not in a world worker listing.
Information of his exit follows the latest departure of Mark Kokes, who lead BlackBerry’s general patent technique. Kokes final month joined a well being expertise firm.
Schubert joined BlackBerry in March 2015, based on his LinkedIn profile, as the corporate was embarking on a serious push to spice up licensing income.
BlackBerry is making an attempt to influence different corporations to pay licensing royalties to make use of its trove of some 40,000 international patents on expertise together with working programs, networking infrastructure, acoustics, messaging, automotive subsystems, cybersecurity and wi-fi communications.
Schubert has created and executed patent-licensing packages for at the very least 4 corporations, together with BlackBerry, relationship again to 1992, based on his LinkedIn profile. It lists portfolio mining, patent valuation and negotiating patent gross sales as areas of experience.
He was on account of characterize BlackBerry at a Seattle-area patent convention subsequent month to debate how working corporations can make cash off their mental property, based on an agenda posted on the convention web site in August. He’s not listed as a panelist.
BlackBerry disclosed it had secured royalty-bearing offers with Cisco Programs Inc and one other firm that it didn’t title quickly after Schubert joined. It additionally filed patent infringement lawsuits throughout his tenure in opposition to Nokia and Avaya Inc which might be ongoing.
BlackBerry on Thursday disclosed that it had settled one other lawsuit, filed in opposition to low-end Android cellphone producer BLU Merchandise Inc.
Each corporations declined to reveal phrases of the deal.
© Thomson Reuters 2017