"What we're seeing though now can be loosely described as patent terrorism, where people are using their patent horde as a threat"

--James Eagleton, systems product manager for Sun Microsystems (about Microsoft)

Summary: The world's largest patent troll gains government connections

In our many posts about Intellectual Ventures we showed that it lobbied the government while destroying the country's main remaining industry (bar arms perhaps). Well, now we know that Intellectual Ventures will have more connections inside the government, having just hired avid Kris:

The assistant attorney general who has overseen some of the most significant terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is leaving the Justice Department.

Assistant Attorney General David Kris will become general counsel at a company founded by the retired chief strategist and top technology officer at Microsoft Corp., Nathan Myhrvold.

This was mentioned in Groklaw 3 days ago and a reader told us last night that Groklaw also noticed David Farber's passing of Stan Hanks's words: "What Paul Allen is doing pales in comparison to what Nathan Myhrvold is doing -- or rather, scaling up to do -- with Intellectual Ventures. I'm under NDA from a recent job interview there or I'd say more, but let's just leave it at you owe it to yourself to read his web site in its entirety, and contemplate what a concerted effort to fully prosecute infringement and/or licensing deals against a portfolio of over 30,000 patents would look like, in addition to the fresh patents filed by his "think tank"....

"Massively cool stuff going on there, but it can go from cool to scary in a big hurry."

Yes, even patent lawyers have begun complaining about Intellectual Ventures, including the site of Patent WatchTroll. Another booster of this abuse of patents is the Gates Foundation, which occasionally helps sell licenses to patents of Intellectual Ventures. There should be federal investigations into these sorts of activities. ⬆