Intellectual Ventures actually does create the patents. We think they're for obvious, trivial ideas, but they definitely create them. (I guess they don't actually sue other companies directly, either.)

My understanding was that it's likely that some of the people who work at Rockstar are the inventors of some of the held patents. Maybe not the key patents, but it's a company holding a lot of patents and employing a bunch of engineers, there's almost certainly some overlap.

I agree that the transfer of ownership of patents is a potential aspect of a dividing line, that seems to be a common theme. But it seems like it wouldn't be too difficult for a patent troll to skirt this by "employing" an inventor, or somehow wedging the name of one of their employees into the inventors list for every patent.