I continue to hold out this vain hope that Intellectual Ventures is an elaborate satire, an effort by some smart technologists to demonstrate how broken the US patent system is by exploiting it in such a comically villainous fashion.

Yeah, I've thought that they're trying to be a patent martyr too, that they're using every trick that can be used in hopes that eventually it brings about change. Smart people, long game, etc. However, the fact remains that engaging in the bad behavior is...bad.

The Westboro Baptist Church of patent trolls, in other words.

He who smelt it dealt it.

Though not for coining it.

Peter Detkin also wrote this piece.