This highlights one of the problems with the current patent system that I illustrate in my recent essay: How Law Shapes the Business Landscape, and a Patent Puzzle.

http://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-busine...

Corporations with no assets and no technological liabilities can acquire patents and use them as weapons for extortion. There is no counterbalancing force. These corporations may be created and dissolved at will for an exploitative purpose: they need not ever invent, produce, or otherwise give back to the public: the initial impetus for the patent system in the first place.

The liquidity afforded to ideas that Intellectual Ventures claims to create might, in fact, create enough social good that the drain via litigation is mollified. Given that they've claimed to be pacifists here, the deception laid bare looks particularly evil.