The "disclosure" represented by a patent issued to a random shell corporation is minimal considering the opaque (and yet still ambiguous) legal jargon they are written in and the sheer volume of junk patents issued. This is, of course, part of the tragedy of today's lamentable patent system.

If Intellectual Ventures was actually interested in performing a service for the industry they would publish all sorts of information about all their patents in their portfolio (starting with which patents they control), so that potential licensees could actually collect and license valuable ideas. But of course it's much more profitable to make patents as confusing, opaque, vague, and secret as possible, then wait for someone to unknowingly infringe and sue them a couple of years after it's too late to stop infringing.

I think the point is that, when something novel is invented, two routes can be taken:

Patent: Protection from competition for a limited time, in exchange for disclosing the methods of the invention.

Trade secret: Keep things on lock, and make money on it until someone else figures it out for themselves.

This is why things like "pinch zoom" and about 5m other shitty patents are so absurd: There's very little "novel" about most software patents. And these people are making really broad claims, and doing nothing with them, for the sake of litigation. It's a mockery of the intention of the office.