IntVen Myhrvold Patent Consortia

Good WSJ article and derivative TC article about IntVen - Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures raising and returning some serious money.

People have been knee-jerking like crazy over this - but as someone with more than a passing knowledge of intellectual property and patent licensing - I want to say this:

This isn’t that crazy or diabolical - big companies have been creating cross-licensing consortia for years that lets them interact in the marketplace and get things done - like sell DVD players that depend on a whole bunch of different patents held by different companies - intven is the same model but organized in a more ongoing vehicle way rather than one project at a time.