A US fund that buys into technology companies and then pursues patent infringements on their behalf through worldwide courts plans to launch in Ireland as a springboard for expansion into Europe.

Erich Spangenberg, chief executive of IP Navigation Group in Dallas, said he and his wife had built a so-called intellectual property empire suing US technology giants in the past decade. IP Navigation, which buys outright or takes stakes in technology companies, now acts for about 40 clients in the US and Germany, he said.

"We go to the infringing company and ask them why they are using our technology. Then we go into the courts. Only 10% percent of companies settle before then," said Spangenberg in Dublin last week.

He said that IP Navigation and another fund controlled by his wife, after starting out with $1m, now controlled over $50m of investments in technology companies by using only their own money.

IP Navigation will seek to invest $2m-$3m in any single Irish client company and then capitalise on alleged patent infringements by suing technology giants through the courts.

IP Navigation said it was helping Rosebud LMS, a New York technology company run by Monaghan man Jack Mohan, in a lawsuit Rosebud has launched against software giant Adobe Systems.

In its 16-page complaint filed in the Delaware district court on 14 May, Rosebud alleged that Adobe infringed its patent by using a proprietary document-editing application it had first shown Adobe in 2002. It claims Adobe used the technology in the Adobe Acrobat 9.0 software release.

Spangenberg said IP's own companies had also been sued for alleged patent infringement. Last week, Microsoft launched a complaint in a Seattle court against Salesforce.com, a client company of IP Navigation.