Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's Patent Troll is Going After Banks Now, Expanding to Large-scale Racketeering Using Pyramid Scheme With Approximately 2,000 Proxies

Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Gates' very close friend, created an ever-expanding pyramid scheme

Nathan Myhrvold



Summary: The criminal operation of Bill Gates' close friend is getting further explored and the more gets revealed, the more urgent it seems to arrest the perpetrators

The Microsoft- and Gates Foundation-backed patent troll known as Intellectual Ventures just keeps growing and growing. It devours a lot of the industry using patent tax which accompanies extortion and lobbying. This should be criminal and those behind it would be better off in some padded cell. They are dangerous sociopaths with friends in high places.



“Remember a few months ago, when Intellectual Ventures said that there was nothing at all nefarious about their 2,000 or so shell companies?”
      --Mike Masnick
One key person in this extortion racket is Peter Detkin, whom we wrote about before. Companies like CBS help whitewash him and others, impeding federal action that should shut it all down in the name of RICO Act. One longtime critic of this extortion racket writes about new facts, starting with some background: "Nearly two years ago, This American Life did an incredible episode about patents and patent trolling, which really got the issue of patent trolling into the mainstream. At the center of that episode was an exploration into Intellectual Ventures, the world's largest, most obnoxious patent troll. The story revolved around one single patent (5,771,354), which Intellectual Ventures itself had held up as an example of how they were really just helping the poor, brilliant, lone inventor who was being ripped off. In that story, This American Life reporter/producer Alex Blumberg and NPR New reporter Laura Sydell tried to follow the story of that patent to exonerate Intellectual Ventures and show that, indeed, it was helping small inventors get their due. But the story turned out to not stand up to even the slightest amount of scrutiny. Because when they went in search of the inventor, Chris Crawford, he refused to respond to them, and then IV itself noted that it had "sold off" the patent and it was currently engaged in litigation. The entity doing the litigation was a company called Oasis Research, which had an empty office in Marshall, Texas with no employees, but had sued over a dozen internet companies for broadly doing online backup.

"In a hilarious exchange with IV's Peter Detkin, the guy who coined the phrase patent troll but now likes to delude himself that he's not an executive at the world's largest troll, pretended that it was some sort of "ambush" when Blumberg simply asked him to explain when IV bought the patent from Crawford and then when and to whom they sold it, based on the data on the US Patent Office's own website. Hilariously, Detkin insisted that he hadn't looked at the USPTO website, so he didn't know what was going on."

According to the following paragraph, there are now over or around 2,000 proxies, not about 1,100 as reported a few years ago. This is a pyramid schemes and there are laws against such schemes. Masnick writes: "Remember a few months ago, when Intellectual Ventures said that there was nothing at all nefarious about their 2,000 or so shell companies? Perhaps they knew what was coming... which was a pretty clear expose of how Intellectual Ventures is very much the same sort of entity that Peter Detkin once claimed were hellbent on holding up innovation. Except, now he's profiting from it. Massively. While pretending not to."

"There is a law against this. There may even be several laws against this."Here is another interesting new bit about this pyramid scheme: "Well-known non-practicing entity Intellectual Ventures has been fairly quiet on the litigation front, particularly as compared to other high-profile NPEs. And when IV has filed suits, it has generally targeted technology companies, such as semiconductor manufacturers, handset makers, or telecom service providers. But earlier this week, IV branched out into new territory, suing the First National Bank of Omaha in Nebraska district court and accusing the bank of infringing several patents (including some potentially standard-essential patents)."

There is a law against this. There may even be several laws against this. The proxies act as a shield (obfuscation) against enforcement of the law, or even an investigation.

This is only starting to show the scope of this racketeering operation, which was more recently whitewashed by CBS (aided perpetually by the corporate media that won't do journalism which can result in arrests for racketeering and pyramid schemes).

Intellectual Ventures is neither a company nor a firm. It is a criminal operation, operating with impunity.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
 
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October