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

Rumour: After FSF Abandons Office in Boston LibrePlanet Will Also Leave Boston
In the past, Libreplanet (or LibrePlanet) was 'branched' out of MIT to "lesser" universities in the same city
linuxsecurity.com is 100% Slopfarm, Nonstop Fake 'Articles' About Security and "Linux"
More than one fake 'author' participates in this, so it deserves condemnation
Social Control Media as a Rapid Race to the Bottom - Part III - Foreign Interference and Chaff/Flare
Why would you trust alleged 'communication' (platforms) controlled by the same people who cut your undersea cables?
[Video] Richard Stallman Explains What Intelligence in Computing Really Means and How Old That Is (Story About 1975, 50 Years Ago)
Uploaded 11 hours ago by Manuel Cuda News
 
Microsoft Laid Off Several Thousands of Workers (Not Counting Those Driven Out) in 3+ Waves of Layoffs in 2 Months in 2025
About a thousand workers laid off per month
Microsoft Reduced to Almost Nothing in the Congos
Even worse for Microsoft in DRC (Democratic Republic Of The Congo)
Why We No Longer Hear About "Red Hat Layoffs"
Sometimes they don't call them "layoffs" are all; it's just PIPs, RTO, and "relocation" offers. They try to compel people to resign/retire
Reputation is Not a Human Right, It's Something One Earns
One can also lose one's reputation for harming women
FreeBSD Foundation is Trying to Improve "Laptop Support", But It Has Outsourced Everything to Microsoft Proprietary Software
Despite many valid alternatives existing and fast maturing
Links 06/03/2025: Discord Wants the Public to Pay for Losses, MongoDB Shares Collapse
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/03/2025: Remaking Sites, Gemini Capsule Turns 5
Links for the day
Links 06/03/2025: Trade Wars, Trademarks, Attacks on (and by) the Media, Digg to Relaunch
Links for the day
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): The Problems Are Much Bigger Than the Rigged Elections
It's not only about elections
Dr. Andy Farnell on Brutality and (or of) Brute-Force Computing
"Understandably, the ecological cost of compute was never really on the minds of pure computer scientists"
IBM Absorbs More of Red Hat and There Are Several Layoff Rumours
Those are just rumours for now
Gemini Links 06/03/2025: Digg, Project Failure, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 05, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Links 05/03/2025: Prioritising Science, Patents Squashed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/03/2025: News Processing, Misbehaving, and Git
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Cracking Past the 4% Barrier in Hungary
There are still quite a few very famous developers and Free software projects from Hungary
Meanwhile in the Matrix Room #dei:fedoraproject.org
Remember that IBM does a lot of perception manipulation
Rumour About Red Hat Layoffs Yesterday
Can somebody from Red Hat or someone who knows someone there (impacted or not) confirm that there are layoffs this week at Red Hat?
New Short Clip of Richard Stallman's Thoughts on the "Hey Hi" (AI) Hype, Courtesy of Manuel Cuda News
about 6 hrs ago
What is fixated behavior? Stalker or just a fan of Emma Raducanu?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
In Iran, GNU/Linux Reaches New Highs, According to statCounter
Does that make sense? In light of geopolitics? Probably.
Always Safety First
We have some reasons to suspect that one of several parties (possibly not in the UK but having connections here), having suffered major and very expensive setbacks, may look to harm the messenger one way or another
Links 05/03/2025: Starbucks Debt Soars and CFO Changed, Apple Pretends to Value Privacy, "Cloudflare Blocking Privacy Focused Users From Accessing Third-Party Websites"
Links for the day
Canonical's Latest Love Letter to Microsoft (Ubuntu Promoting Proprietary Spyware With Back Doors)
Typical Canonical, promoting Microsoft (and sometimes Windows) instead of competing against them
What Microsoft and GitHub Really, Really, REALLY Do Not Want You to See or Know About
They're trying to misuse law in a completely different continent or to allege that reporting important facts is in breach of privacy law
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Other 'Linux' Sites With LLM Slop
SEO spam with machine-generated fodder, plus a person to whom English isn't a first language
GNU/Linux Climbs to Record Levels in Switzerland. Can the EU, Norway, the UK, and Switzerland Divorce GAFAM?
Germany openly speaks about becoming independent from the US. How about Switzerland?
Gemini Links 05/03/2025: Living in Interesting Times, Font, and Social Control Media with Gos v1.0.0
Links for the day
Just Because Common Currencies (Including the US Dollar) Are Considered Uncertain Doesn't Mean People Should Adopt Volatile Multi-Level (Pyramid) Schemes
the scammers are trying to "go mainstream"
Use RSS Readers Instead of Social Control Media
RSS readers were designed to save time. Social Control Media was designed to waste time.
The 'Windows Era' Already Came to an End
Microsoft said to shareholders everything would be alright because of "clown computing" and then "hey hi"
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): Microsoft Committing the Largest GPL Violation in Human History, Then OSI Covering That Up on Microsoft's Payroll
LLMs don't make GPL violations any more noble or acceptable; it's not hard to see what OSI was paid by Microsoft for
Social Control Media as a Rapid Race to the Bottom - Part II - Think Before You Talk
The 'socmed' nonsense does not exist in our home
Links 04/03/2025: Hardware, Health, Data Breaches, Politics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 04, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 04, 2025
Luxembourg: GNU/Linux at 8% Based on Estimates
steady increases this year
Gemini Links 04/03/2025: Bicycle, Photos, and Motorola 6809 Assemblers
Links for the day
Crossbow tragedy, bigger than Kyle Clifford, social media culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Microsoft OSI Apparently Still Reading Techrights Closely, Trying to Make Face-Saving PR Moves
They have long had this reactionary rhythm, wherein it feels like we can 'control' what they publish and when by merely highlighting facts about them
Links 04/03/2025: Microsoft/Korea Game Industry Association Workforce Cuts, Outlook and 365 Outage Affects Very Many
Links for the day
Transcript of Richard Stallman's Interview With Manuel Cuda News in Italy (Debunking Fake "AI")
A rough draft, but checked by two people
Chad: All-Time Lows for Windows, According to statCounter
According to statCounter, many in Chad moved to Android
Links 04/03/2025: Universities Are Under Attack, Windows Attracts Ransom Against Ministry of Health
Links for the day
Microsoft Collapses While GNU/Linux Rises in Bulgaria, According to statCounter
Microsoft is losing across all sectors
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): An Introduction
In a nutshell: there's a massive conflict inside the OSI and the OSI stooges (staff serving Big Sponsors like Microsoft) try to hide it
Paraguay: GNU/Linux Surging to New Usage Levels (7%), According to statCounter
Notice that the gains are at Microsoft Windows' expense
Social Control Media as a Rapid Race to the Bottom - Part I - That Sinking Feeling
When you realise you made an error and things you adopted more than 15 years ago became utterly bad
Microsoft's Entryism as Mortal Risk/Danger: The Example of the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Microsoft is a cult
Links 04/03/2025: Microsoft Issues Policy Instructions to the Cheeto Mussolini Administration, Cloudflare Engages in Mass Censorship Again
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/03/2025: Athens, Fedora 41, and Yelling at Clouds
Links for the day
FSF Amicus Brief: Aspose.PDF for .NET 24.2.0, OOXML (.docx), and Microsoft Word (Proprietary)
Could the FSF not find any law firm that, in addition to talking about or for Free software, does not use .NET, OOXML, and almost everything Microsoft?
New Interview With Richard Stallman in Italy (Manuel Cuda News)
Due to Google's growing aggression against Free software and proper APIs, this cannot be downloaded and converted to a free format
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Belatedly Comments on Case That Tests Copyleft in the United States
"The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced today it has submitted an amicus brief in the case entitled Neo4j"
If They Try to Censor You on Some Topic, Then You Should Cover This Topic Even More
OSI is only a small part of it
The UEFI hype and Microsoft's lies
By Sami Tikkanen
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 03, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, March 03, 2025
Thorsten Glaser & Open Source Initiative (OSI) resignations due to AI whitewashing
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock