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The biggest part of the problem is that companies (and founders) are forbidden from speaking up after licensing deals are made. Perhaps you could post anonymously, but you'd still be violating the NDA in spirit and you'd be punished if discovered.

In other words, if three companies down the block signed millions away to Intellectual Ventures, you would have no idea. Maybe the risk is overblown. Unfortunately we have no idea of knowing.

They try to hammer this point home in the podcast.

It occurred to me there is simple legislation that might chip away at all this shadiness: Pass a law that forbids NDAs in patent licensing deals.




You'd know it if it happpened. Management may not do a PR, but people talk. Remember the lawsuit and NDA agreement are proceeded by talks. At the very least you'd know they were approached and then suddenly went silent on the matter.

If it did work it would be the greatest conspiracy ever pulled off. A company extracting a billion hostile dollars and people not even posting on anonymous sites? So not likely.

The genius of IV's NDAs isn't that they have millions of companies paying them, but that they can create the mythology that they might. And you might be next.

I'm literally about 100x more worried that my architect gets hit by a bus than I am of being sued over patents.




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