Did I miss a memo recently? Openwave (NASDAQ: OPWV) invented the mobile Internet? In its press release this morning, the California software company announced it is divesting itself of its core software business to a private equity house and will become a store of intellectual property rights. The remaining patent assets, some 200 strong, will be licensed to members of the mobile ecosystem in subject areas such as mobile messaging, browsing and other means of mobile connectivity from device to network to application and file servers. This company, to be renamed Unwired Planet, will presumably seek to make a living by licensing its IPR, its ultimate fate to be announced upon deal closure.

As someone who makes their living understanding and advising on technology markets, I am no stranger to vendor marketing department claims. Lower costs, improved revenues, better customer experience and all other means of getting to software nirvana pepper the literature that crosses my desk on a daily basis. In most cases, I take it with a grain of salt. (Hideous pun absolutely intended.) And in most cases, there is at least some case study evidence to back up these claims, even if to modest degrees.

But inventing the mobile internet? Please. Even Larry Ellison isn’t that brazen.

Since its founding in 1996 as Libris, the company has traveled an uneven path of organic growth, acquisition (phone.com, software.com) and ultimate decline. Revenues have dropped by half over the past four years while hundreds of millions in net losses piled up during the same period. At one point it claimed nearly half the market for mobile enablers in browsers and e-mail software. Today it offers a suite of products that are niche competitors, leading none of its categories.

The Internet is not so much a thing as it is an environment to which no one person or company may truly lay claim. To say any company invented something as pervasive and all-encompassing as the Internet – even the mobile Internet – is an insult to the hundreds of companies whose hardware, software and services interoperate according to the dozens of standards all up and down the OSI protocol stack.

We should have seen this coming. Several years ago, a few market analysts, including this one, implored company execs to find a name other than “mediation” for its collection of software assets aimed at policy and video optimization tasks. The term “mediation” had been allocated to a different set of network software tasks years before and buyers would be confused in ways unfavorable to this new kid on the block, we reasoned. But the company’s marketeers insisted Openwave had it right and charged forward. Whoops.

Product names, tag lines and market claims have their place: to stimulate interest, clarify position and communicate intent. But outrageous claims such as Openwave’s are so far beyond the pale that they really only cast doubt rather than inspire confidence.

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