In 1856, sewing machine manufacturers Grover & Baker, Singer, and Wheeler & Wilson, all accusing each other of patent infringement, met in Albany, New York to pursue their suits.
Orlando B. Potter, a lawyer and president of Grover & Baker, proposed that, rather than squander their profits on litigation, they pool their patents.
[3][4][5] In August 2005, a patent pool was formed by about 20 companies active in the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) domain.
Patent pools are only one example of cases where members of an otherwise competitive industry join in common cause to create some resource that is to their collective benefit.
In 1995, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released the “Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property”[13] which stated that the pooling of patents may have “…pro-competitive benefits”.