Conspiracy, or just job hunting?
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols brings up the Microsoft-Acacia conspiracy theory.
"Acacia now has two new corporate officers. There's Jonathan Taub, Microsoft's director of strategic alliances for the mobile and embedded devices, who's now an Acacia vice president. And, just days before IP Innovation launched its suit against Red Hat and Novell, Acacia hired Brad Brunell, a top Microsoft executive who was formerly Microsoft's general manager of IP licensing, as a senior vice president."
Sure, this could be the mysterious anti-Linux cartel pulling strings behind the scenes, but there's a simpler explanation: Taub and Brunell wanted to create higher-profile roles for themselves at Microsoft, by getting the company into the patent troll business. Unfortunately for them, sensible execs higher up at Microsoft decided that they didn't want to take the recruiting and employee retention hit that comes with a reputation for patent trolling. So Taub and Brunell quit to find positions where their talents would be appreciated, at a dedicated patent troll firm.
That makes more sense to me. Patent trolling isn't really compatible with being in the software business long-term, and Microsoft is one of the few companies in IT that acts like it thinks further out than next quarter.