should this
be placed here ? 
Three days ago in this column, I spoke of the simian behavior of Steve Ballmer, concerning the current Microsoft patent infringement claims. Today, several sites are following up with news of a law suit for patent infringement, not from Microsoft, but for a company that does nothing other than hold or enforce, by litigation, its held patents.
The strange thing about the company, IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corporation, which is suing both Red Hat and Novell, has held the patent (patent no. 5,072,412) , issued on December 10, 1991, and is just now asserting it in a court action. There are also 2 other unnamed patents that IPTLC has claimed Red Hat and Novell are infringing upon.
Stranger still, this patent holding company, with no development process of its own, has, within the last year, had two new employees come aboard who previously had toiled in Redmond, Washington. The people, Brad Brunell, and Jonathan Taub, were part of the gang at One Microsoft Way. Brunell was General Manager of the Intellectual Property Licensing division. Taub was Director of Strategic Alliances for the mobile and embedded business unit.
from the article on ZDNet
“Mr. Brunell, as General Manager, Intellectual Property Licensing, was responsible for inbound and outbound patent licensing. He created and managed a team of negotiation, financial and legal experts which developed outbound intellectual property licensing programs and brought in intellectual property via acquisitions, strategic partnerships and licensing.
“Previously as a Senior Director he was in a strategy role focusing on digital media adoption which included key deals with Time Warner and the Walt Disney Company, leading the negotiating team for the settlement of the Intertrust patent litigation, and putting together the Content Guard ownership structure between Microsoft, Time Warner and Thomson. He also served on the board of Content Guard, a digital rights management patent licensing company.”
Well. Isn’t that special!
also from the article at Ars Technica
Microsoft is clearly pursuing a campaign to spread the perception that Linux is vulnerable to intellectual property attack, but it seems hard to believe that these lawsuits fit into the company’s agenda. The basis for perceiving a Microsoft connection becomes even less plausible when you consider the fact that one of the targets of IP Innovation’s suit is Novell, which allied itself with Microsoft last year. On the other hand, we do know that Microsoft has attempted to surreptitiously fund litigation against Linux in the past.
Not only does this unfolding of events show a chain-like structure, it seems to once again point toward the fatherless rodent-like nature of the senior members of the company that more and more people are loving to hate, located in Redmond, Washington.
What does this chain show us?
1] No computer software entity is safe from the rantings and accusations of Mr. Ballmer.
2] Patent law enforcement leaves much to be desired.
3] While many think the folks at Microsoft are stupid for releasing Vista, it simply shows the intelligence there was more focused on the devious operations of litigation.
4] There is no honor among thieves [Novell signed deals with Microsoft, and are still part of this legal action – Novell must have not signed quickly enough]
5] Patent trolls, like IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corporation, need to be held in check somehow…the method may be unknown, but the cause is just, and so a way will be found. Perhaps a time limit on patent enforcement, once discovered, would be good. The failure to reign in patent claims like these means the stifling of innovation, as no one will make any progress, being too busy investigating what might be infringed.
6]The money from products and services is beginning to slow, so companies that have become accustomed to huge cash flows are having to look elsewhere to feed the greed.
And although no direct causal link can be proven between the move of the Microsoft employees to the patent troll company, it certainly makes an amazing coincidence otherwise.
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[tags] IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corporation, patent trolls, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, ZDNet, Ars Technica [/tags]