The best one I looked at was happening in Europe. The European Investment Bank, the Caisse des Dépôts in France, and several others were pooling money to buy patents. This was the model I was suggesting that Canada look at or even join, because they felt the same way: they were concerned that there were too many patents sitting on the shelves at universities and if they could buy those patents and put them together in patent families and license them, it would be a win-win for the universities, for industry, for everyone. As well, there might be a good little handy investment there for the banks, given what happened with Nortel and how much money those patents brought in.
On October 2nd, 2012. See this statement in context.