The New York Times this morning has an good read on Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, his Bellevue-based intellectual property firm that's made the purchasing and licensing of patents into a billion-dollar business. The story gets into the nitty gritty of whether this constitutes ensuring that inventors get compensation for their creations (IV has paid out $315 million to individuals so far) or whether IV is simply using its vast storehouse of patents to sue and extract lucrative settlements from large corporations.
Yet another aspect the story covers is the company's secrecy and its use of layers of corporatocracy to hide the ownership of its patents. Here's an intersting line:
"Up to 1,110 shell companies and affiliated entities appear to be linked to Intellectual Ventures."
That's citing as its source a pair of reports from research firm Avancept, both of which are available here. Myhrvold's firm got a lengthy write-up in the December 2008 issue of Washington CEO Magazine as well, although that article isn't online.