I got tired of this and other VC games after my tenth startup a couple of years ago, so I guess it is possible that attitudes have changed. Even if Fred is one of the good guys, though, I'd still bet that he's in a small minority. That's the real point, which of course has been missed by most of the responses. Pick a random startup and go look for patent applications. Most of them clearly are pursuing that strategy, and most of those are likely to be doing so at the behest of their investors. This has been going on for many years, so why is it suddenly evil when Yahoo! does the totally inevitable? Is there seriously any reason to believe that Etsy or Twilio - USV companies for which I've already found applications - wouldn't? This kind of thing won't stop until people like Fred refuse to invest in companies that are pursuing patents without a binding commitment to use them only in defense, and for all their strong words they don't seem to be doing that.