Intellectual Ventures, a Seattle firm known more for acquiring patents than dispensing with them, announced a deal this week to sell rights to a large portfolio of satellite communications patents to Thales Alenia Space, a Franco-Italian joint venture that recently won a contract to supply a new fleet of satellites to Iridium Communications. Where did the inventions come from? Mainly the original Iridium project.

The man who can explain this circular-sounding process is Vincent Pluvinage, a veteran in patent-trading circles who runs a unit of Intellectual Ventures in Silicon Valley. His six-person team focuses on what he calls “strategic” acquisitions–pools of patents costing $10 million to $50 million or so–that can be repackaged and bring a return to the firm widely known as IV.

A key focus for the group is large technology-development efforts that churned out a large number of patents, whether or not the companies developing the technologies were successful. “If we find a situation like that, what we ask ourselves is, what other assets could we assemble that would be synergistic–then where could we redeploy the assets and create a return,” he says.

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Clearly, shaken investors are trying to divine just what, exactly, Jobs means by “complex,” which could mean anything from more rest and time with family to surgery, IV meds or whatever.

Sounds like Jobs is doing the right thing for himself, his family and the company. But all anyone can do is hope he gets well.