It may have described itself as a "patent defense fund", and that technically might not have been a lie, with some twisting of the meaning of words. However, wh

It may have described itself as a "patent defense fund", and that technically might not have been a lie, with some twisting of the meaning of words. However, what was going on was that people paid IV, and in return got protection from being sued over patents. The only way that can work is either 1. You are paying to avoid being sued by IV, or 2. You are paying for IV to protect you from being sued. In the first case, it's nothing more than a license fee, i.e., paying to avoid enforcement against you. In the second, IV can only protect you by cross-licensing patents or through assertion of its patents, so it's the same as 1 but with the threat against someone else. To my knowledge 1 was the only thing done in practice, so IV was just like any other non practicing patent-holding entity, except for the "innovation" of aggregating massive amounts of patents all in one place, and claiming to have no interest in actually suing people - instead expecting everyone to happily pay them. I doubt many people actually believed that they would never sue anyone, and indeed, shortly after that claim the lawsuits started. I don't think there was ever a doubt IV was a patent troll. Just bigger, and with some attempt at good PR.