Canadian consolidation as ‘technology incubator’ Intertainment Media and mobile mapping specialist Avenza today announced that they’ve banded together to acquire assets from Poynt, a struggling maker of mobile, location-aware search and advertising products.
Intertainment and Avenza will both acquire Poynt’s platform and patents, split 50/50, for an undisclosed sum, and the companies have established a new private company to operate the asset.
The bidding for Poynt’s assets had been ongoing for months now.
From the release:
Poynt has a number of early stage patents granted in their key business areas and a vast international user-base of its popular mobile application.
Localized mobile marketing has grown significantly in the past few years and the Poynt application has had tremendous growth globally as a leading mobile application on industry leading mobile platforms, such as, BlackBerry, Apple, Android and Windows.
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Poynt claims its platform is used by more than 16 million people in 10 countries to look for nearby retailers, restaurants, events and offers.
Financialy though, the company has been struggling for a while, as its archive of news releases shows, leading to today’s announcement.
In fact, Poynt had filed for bankruptcy back in July 2012.
The new private entity will focus on the development of geo-based localization opportunities for consumers and businesses and for the two owners to ‘accelerate patent protection efforts’, which I suspect is a euphemism for ‘shortly kicking off a series of fresh lawsuits’.
Poynt had previously entered into a ‘IP protection partnership’ with WiLAN and its subsidiary Gladios IP, putting them in charge of managing and monetizing its patent portfolio.
Anthony Pearlman, president and COO of Intertainment Media has been appointed by the partners as CEO of the new enterprise.
Image credit: Thinkstock
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