Justice Department's Top Terrorism Prosecutor Goes Patent Troll

from the sad-state-of-affairs dept

We've certainly had our issues with the way the Justice Department has dealt with certain terrorism "threats" -- specifically with its "thwarting" of its own bomb plots, and ridiculously amateurish attempts to create informants, who often made situations worse, not better. However, assistant attorney general for national security, David Kris, generally had a very good reputation, and a history of standing up to his bosses when he thought they were going too far -- earning admiration even from those who normally disagree with the DOJ. So it was a bit of a surprise to many people to see him step down after just two years on the job.

And while his expertise was supposedly in national security law, and you could see how that could be put to good use in private practice, instead it appears that Kris has decided to go patent troll. He has joined uber patent troll, Intellectual Ventures as its new General Counsel... just as the company has finally started suing companies for not agreeing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to gain protection from its giant patent portfolio. While I certainly didn't agree with Kris on many of his positions, pretty much everyone agreed that he was really smart and thoughtful on a lot of these subjects. It seems that having his talents go to the world's biggest patent troll in an effort to disrupt innovation by putting a toll on it is a huge waste of talent that could have been put to productive, rather than destructive, use.

Filed Under: david kris, national security, patents
Companies: intellectual ventures