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Comment by alwaysinshade | Hacker News Reader

"I thought it was impossible to be more of a douchebag than Intellectual Ventures, but apparently, there's a new winner in town."

What Rockstar is doing is very shitty, but IV takes the cake because they're a non-practicing entity. It's one thing to sue competitors for making products similar to your own, it's another to make no products and sue people who dare to make something vaguely encroaching your vaguely defined patent.

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But that's exactly what Rockstar does. From the article:

> Part of the company's strategy is avoiding a patent-countersuit by not having any operating businesses. Essentially, Rockstar wants to enjoy the same advantage patent trolls have, even though it's owned by direct Google competitors like Apple and Microsoft.

"But that's exactly what Rockstar does"

Rockstar acts as a firewall, sure, but the parent companies make things. IV made a mosquito-killing laser that no one could buy, then allegedly got down to business by flicking individual patents to shell LLCs and suing indie app developers for using iOS's in-app-purchase APIs. Classy.

I think RockStar is even worse because they are an NPE that is a sham front set up to further the anticompetitive business interests of two of the largest and most dominant companies on the planet. That's all the evil of a patent troll plus extra ...

> [...] largest and most dominant companies on the planet.

... in software.

No. By market cap, Apple is the largest company in the world, full stop[1]. Microsoft is number 7, having spent much of the 90's at #1. Google does not rank at all. So at least by some definitions these companies are indeed the largest in the world without qualification.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_...

Market cap is one indicator. You can also look at full capitalization, ie debt plus equity. Or you look at number of employees, or total sales. Also, quoting your Wikipedia article: "Some state-owned companies are far larger than even the largest public corporation. For example Saudi Aramco's value has been estimated at $10 trillion, which is twenty times the size of Apple [...]."

Anyway, Apple and Microsoft are pretty big and dominating in their industries. No doubt about that.

Google actually ranks 15. http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/ft500

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