From Windows Phone to patent troll: Microsoft Senior Attorney joins Acacia

Acacia Research Corporation, one of the most litigious and notorious patent trolls wasting valuable space on this planet, today announced that it has rounded out its management team with the appointment of Paul Bawel as Vice President.

The move is notable, because Bawel has over 13 years of patent licensing experience, having previously worked as Sector IP Law Director at Motorola. Most recently, he was a Senior Attorney for Microsoft, where he was responsible for managing patent and IP issues for the Windows Phone division.

Coincidentally, roughly two years ago Microsoft agreed to license 74 patents held by Acacia, related to smartphones. And now Bawel has apparently decided that it’d be great working for a patent hoarder that hasn’t produced or sold any product or service since its very inception. Because who cares about innovation, right?

This despite that fact that Acacia’s subsidiaries control over 200 patent portfolios, putting it high on the ranking of non-practicing entities or NPEs (a euphemism for ‘patent trolls’) with the largest patent holdings.

Seriously: you’d be hard-pressed to find a technology company that hasn’t yet been sued by Acacia, so I’ll just leave you with the following, hugely saddening graph instead of listing their many, many targets:

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