Summary: The patent-trolling spinoff of Bill Gates and Microsoft carries on destroying the Internet and extorting competition

Microsoft generates top patent trolls, it does not only feed some patent trolls with extra cash which they in turn use to attack GNU/Linux with lawsuits. Microsoft's former CTO and a close friend of Bill Gates has built a pyramid scheme using patents, which the Gates Foundation helped bankroll. Yes, it helped fund the world's biggest patent troll, who extorts companies and offers zero value to society, just exploiting it instead and keeping people awake at night. This new article from a familiar author is shrewd enough to point out in the headline that a "Myhrvold-Connected Firm" is the one suing. Myhrvold uses attacks dogs, still. There are over 1,000 such proxies, so it's hard to keep track.

An obscure Virginia company, Pragmatus AV, has sued YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Photobucket.com, claiming the companies infringe three of its patents related to playing digital video. Who is Pragmatus? It’s a company that was formed only five months ago after acquiring a batch of patents from Intellectual Ventures, the giant patent-holding company run by ex-Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CTO Nathan Myhrvold.

It isn’t clear whether the terms of the deal with Pragmatus give Intellectual Ventures a cut of any settlement money or litigation win. About a year ago, Intellectual Ventures started selling off some of its 30,000 patents to small, startup outfits much like Pragmatus—companies often derided in tech circles as “patent trolls.”

In a civilised society, people like Myhrvold would be in prison, not live in a castle next to Bill Gates' mansion. But we still live in a greedy society, not a civilised society. That is at least the mindset that's coming out of Microsoft. They would rather crush people and destroy the industry, as long as they manage to make a buck in the process. ⬆

"The last thing this company needs is another fucking language."

--Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft