Intellectual Ventures co-founder Nathan Myhrvold's growing patent portfolio scares some in the technology business who believe the former Microsoft CTO will use that power as a hammer to win legal battles.

Now, two former executives of Myhrvold's Bellevue patent licensing firm are striking out on their own with support from IBM and Cisco to serve as a counterweight to patent holding firms like Intellectual Ventures. Today, RPX Corp. is launching what it dubs "defensive patent aggregation" -- a membership club of sorts where large and small technology companies pool capital in order to order to protect themselves from patent litigation.

Click here to read the full article on John Cook's Venture Blog, based on his interview with RPX founders John Amster and Geoffrey Barker. Great reporting.