You amaze me. You talk like the accounting situation here is something unique, never encountered before. This type of activity happens all the time in business. There are established Cost Accounting Standards (CAS, google it) with methods and rules to accomodate every scenario imagineable. Additionally, there are tax laws thoroughly addressing these things - how they should be recorded and how expenses should be allocated.

As for whether certain things actually consitute fraud, one must remember that the key component in an accusation of fraud is that you must be able to prove intent - it had to be demonstrably intentional. So a rare transposition of numbers wouldn't cut it, but habitual acts - for a benefit - likely would.

And again, this needs to be put in perspective. These costs - essentially meetings and possible (but not mandatory) travel - are they truly substantial? Millions of dollars? Hundreds of thousands per license? Tens of thousands? How much per meeting? How much a meeting involving travel?

Now I don't ask those questions in an effort to minimize the concern. I ask these questions to suggest that no one in their right mind would risk their job and/or an accusation of fraud (possibly by the IRS) so they could monkey around and try to shift expenses between benefitting entities so one entity might benefit to the tune of a couple thousand bucks. And would the person "monkeying around" see any of that money? How would that work? The risk is obvious. Where's the incentive?

The other thing you seem to miss is that an expense is an expense. TPL will have to pay their portion no matter the patent portfolios sold. But with this overall concern, I guess the one exception is the portfolio that TPL now owns.

I hope this helps.

SGE