So this is where the profits from the patent litigation goes:

Myhrvold started buying equipment for the research kitchen in the Intellectual Ventures lab. Much of the equipment was standard cooking equipment, but it also included items such as rotor-stator homogenizers, ultrahigh-pressure homogenizers, freeze-dryers, a 50 G centrifuge,[1] ultrasonic baths, and rotary evaporators.[9] The laboratory already included other high-tech and industrial equipment,[10] a 100-ton hydraulic press,[10] a large water-jet cutter, an electrical discharge machine, and automated milling machines.

I can see the connection with Heston Blumenthal in terms of the science of cooking etc.

Myhrvold and Wayt Gibbs, an executive editor at Intellectual Ventures who served as the editor-in-chief and project manager for the book, also started hiring writers and editors, research assistants, photo editors, and an art director. First hired was Chris Young, who had just stopped his work of leading the development kitchen in Heston Blumenthal's restaurant The Fat Duck in England.

He's ruining small companies using a tactic that is objectively unfair, and then using his ill-gotten gains to sate his own gluttony.

He'd need to have a long handlebar moustache and tie heroines to railroad tracks to be more of a cartoon villain stereotype.

That made me think of the bit in the Warren Buffet bio where he dines with the head of Sony (or some other Japanese firm) prepared by the CEO's personal chef, and basically loathes every minute of it and is dying for a burger and fries.

It should be noted that $1 million dollars was spent making this cookbook. They definitely had money to spare.