From Techrights

Intellectual Ventures was conceived by a Microsoft executive, Nathan Myhrvold, around the time that Microsoft struggled on several fronts. Intellectual Ventures is backed by Bill Gates (privately). Today, Intellectual Ventures is the world's largest patent troll and it habitually uses other smaller firms (reportedly over 1,000 of them) do handle litigation and assist blackmail in a pyramid scheme-like fashion. Some firms, like Dominion Harbor, buy patents from Intellectual Ventures purely for litigation/extortion, just like Finjan. Techrights has tracked Intellectual Ventures for several years and kept record of its activities in the posts below.

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Also see Acacia.