Intellectual Ventures
Three of the founders are Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung of Microsoft and Peter Detkin of Intel.
I'll leave folks to draw their own conclusions.
A US judge has declared a mistrial in a patent lawsuit brought by Intellectual Ventures against Googorola after the jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict in the case. The patent-holding firm set up by former Microsoftie Nathan Myhrvold is suing over three patents covering mobile phones and software, including one that …
"They were employed by MS and Intel but they were employed as lawyers."
Erm don't think so mate, two seconds on Google would have found for you :
Nathan Myhrvold was Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft.
Edward Jung was chief architect and advisor to executive staff.
Peter Detkin however was a lawyer and worked as Vice President and assistant general counsel in charge of patents, litigation, licensing and antitrust/competition law for Intel. Which is a laugh considering how they screwed AMD by paying OEMs not to buy AMD chips and were successfully sued for several billion dollars. IMHO Intel didn't pay enough to AMD.
If the defendant's looking to lose her freedom (as in jail time) the jury must unanimously find the prosecution proved its case ``beyond a reasonable doubt''. But if it's only money at stake, the jury is instructed to come in for the side which proved its case by ``the preponderance of the evidence''---i.e. whoever's case is stronger, no matter by how thin a margin. In this case they're obviously required to be unanimous, too.