‘And the rest is rust and stardust.’ –Nabokov
If you’re a corporate executive, this may be one of the last sentences you want to hear: “Erich Spangenberg is on the line.” Invariably, Mr. Spangenberg, the 53-year-old owner of IPNav, is calling to discuss a patent held by one of his clients, which he says your company is infringing — and what are you going to do about it?
Mr. Spangenberg is likely to open the conversation on a diplomatic note, but if you put up enough resistance, or try to shrug him off, he can also, as he put it, “go thug.”
[…]
“Once you go thug, though, you can’t unthug,” he explained, returning to his warm and normal tone. “Actually, you can unthug, but if you do that, you can’t rethug. Then you just seem crazy.”
Mr. Spangenberg’s company, based in Dallas, helps “turn idle patents into cash cows,” as it says on its Web site.
