That makes it look like the EFF has been bought and paid for by Mark Cuban.

Who's Mark Cuban? See Wikipedia.[1] His expertise is in promoting sales-oriented companies and getting them acquired by bigger companies. His first big deal was selling Micro Solutions (a reseller of boxed software) to CompuServ. Then he got into sports webcasting ("broadcast.com") and sold that to Yahoo during the first dot-com boom. In each case, someone else created the content, and Cuban marked it up and resold it. That's his business model.

Wikipedia on "broadcast.com": "The record IPO made instant financial successes out of the company's employees through stock options, making 100 employees millionaires on paper (although most of them were unable to exercise their options and sell their shares before the stock price dropped) and founders Cuban and Wagner billionaires."

So that's who's behind this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban

Is that usage correct? Shouldn't he be described as the holder of the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, rather than being described as the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents?

Also, every time I read about the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents I have a mysterious urge to watch "Zoolander".

The usage "is the ____ Chair" as opposed to "holds the ____ Chair" isn't that uncommon in the academic world (treating the Chair as a unique title, rather than only a position). A few random examples from Google:

https://www.design.upenn.edu/city-regional-planning/graduate... Professor Birch is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Chair of Urban Research and Education.

http://www.thelancet.com/lanres/advisory-board Professor Klugman is the William H Foege Chair of Global Health at Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.

http://www.bahaipeacechair.umd.edu/events/apr29-2015 Professor AMITAV ACHARYA is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and is Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C.

https://www.law.louisville.edu/faculty/interdisciplinary-cir... Professor Tony Arnold is the Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use.

https://www.american.edu/provost/human-rights/Faculty-SIS.cf... Professor Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies who studies American society through the experiences of the Muslim community.

I too thought that the 'Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents' sounded like it was situated in the 'Derek Zoolander School for Kids Who Can't Read Good.' I had to skip the rest of the press release and go straight to the White Paper.