One of IV's related-but-unrelated companies, Lodsys, sued a ton of developers for using Apple's purchasing API, despite Apple themselves having paid for a license for that patent.

I can't imagine Apple counsel was very happy about that.

Don't count on Apple to take a stand. Apple is no better. They along with Microsoft and Sony funded billions into Rockstar Consortium, inc which stifles innovation through the patent warchest.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/396141269035925504

Citation needed on Apple beating up on smaller companies by using patents.

If anything Apple's stood in the way of patent trolls and threatened to inject themselves in any lawsuit filed for the Lodsys patent, making it much harder for Lodsys to win or back out.

They've been engaged in a patent war with Samsung, Google, et. al, but this is a whole different game. I'm not saying I approve of this, but they haven't been picking on little companies.

Microsoft, by contrast, is making hundreds of millions in license fees for questionable patents impacting Android devices.

I'm not disputing, as I know nothing about this, but isn't the Apple V Samsung thing very similar to Microsoft V Android? Big companies throwing their weight around? Or is Microsoft hitting small guys?

Microsoft is hitting up a lot of Android vendors for licensing fees. They're not even trying to protect any particular intellectual property. They're just shaking down people for money.

It's Intellectual Ventures that was co-founded by two former senior Microsoft employees that's the worst offender by far.

Those companies that invested in IV probably did it for strategic reasons since barring that they'd probably end up targets.