Summary: As patent trolls devour the economy, working secretly to enrich profiteers who run classic pyramid schemes, federal action becomes imperative and it must target the ringleaders, not just the 'assassins' down the chain (plaintiffs in the pyramid schemes)

Now that Google 'donates' 79 more patents to shield Fog Computing from lawsuits (a bizarre form of marketing that we criticised before) we can assume that Google is worried about patent trolls, not just important leaks that reveal how suicidal it is to store or process data on remote servers.

There is a bipartisan [1, 2] movement against patent trolls and it is being noticed by prominent publications, one of which says: "Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic identifies patent reform as one of several policy interventions libertarian-minded voters might embrace to redress certain entrenched inequalities. Assuming GOP elected officials really do embrace patent reform, as seems reasonably likely, one wonders if this reflects a larger willingness to embrace new anti-incumbent policy initiatives or if it merely reflects the fact that Republican lawmakers aren’t as beholden to advocates of software patents as they are to, say, the doctors’ cartel. My guess is that both factors play a role."

The main problem we have is, it remains unclear whether racketeering operations like Intellectual Ventures will be shut down in the process.

Detkin, one of Nathan's minions (Nathan, in turn, is a minion of Bill Gates) is trying to lie but fails miserably. As IP Troll Tracker put it, "I read this blog post by Peter Detkin and almost tripped over the dog, I was running so fast towards my Patent Troll Translater™. This type of stuff just begs to be run through, no?

"According to IV, there’s a list of five things you should or should not do when considering patent reform. Which I’m not sure IV is actually considering because if the patent system were ever to be reformed? Hello? You’d be out of a business model. Duh."

Yes, well, just as terrorists never call themselves terrorists, trolls never admit being trolls. We have accumulated this collection of trolls in our wiki for convenience (far from a complete list and it does not include hybrid trolls like Apple and Microsoft). For those who can't recall how criminal the enterprise of Bill and Nathan is, here is a fresh reminder from the news:

Shell Company Related To Cowardly Patent Troll, Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures, Forced To Settle Frivolous Lawsuit Against One-Man Business After Law Firm Donates Nearly $200,000 Worth Of Defense

This story will circulate a lot today. I’d like to suggest a more informative and accurate headline than the likely “Lodsys dismisses a lawsuit and donates to charity”.

Let’s cut through four big bullshit points immediately:

“Lodsys” is allegedly one of many fake, meaningless entities created to absorb negativity from Intellectual Ventures’ real business: large-scale patent trolling and extortion of the majority of the tech industry.

Maybe Nathan Myhrvold doesn’t want to admit (to himself?) what his company really does. Or maybe he doesn’t want to tarnish his new reputation as a high-end culinary icon with the people and small businesses his company shakes down and the huge tax he extorts out of one of the world’s biggest industries.

Assigning negative press to “Lodsys” instead of Intellectual Ventures and Myhrvold is exactly what they want the public to do, but it’s dishonest by omission to ignore Intellectual Ventures’ involvement in the Lodsys patents. Bring the fight to their door, not their shell company’s fake office.

[...]

There are no winners in this case. Nothing has changed for the better. If anything, the system has been strengthened and validated.

We’re all losers — except patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures and Nathan Myhrvold, who continue to steal time, money, and willpower from thousands of hard-working people and make the world a worse place, with no repercussions for themselves. Hell, the culinary world thinks Myhrvold’s some sort of genius hero.

I don’t know how anyone in this racket sleeps at night.

Here is what the victim wrote this week:

Lodsys has dismissed the patent infringement lawsuit it filed against my company TMSOFT. The dismissal is with prejudice which means they can never sue my company again for infringing its patents. I did not have to pay any money to Lodsys or sign a license agreement. I also did not sign a confidentially agreement so I’m free to talk about this matter.

Any patent reform or any crackdown on trolls which overlooks Nathan and Bill's criminal enterprise of patents will be utterly pointless. The whole economy is messed up because of pyramid schemes like these. It is about taxing everyone, looting the nation. The Gates Foundation, an Intellectual Ventures partner, does something similar with patents, trying to dress it up as 'charity' (another clever deception campaign). Parasitical elements often establish a method of systematic, non-ending wealth transfer which in no way benefits anyone but a set of plutocrats. There are some analogous scams, but Intellectual Ventures is unique in the area of patents. ⬆