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Yahoo design theorist Joy Mountford may not have had much of a job — but she was hounded out of Yahoo in a particularly nasty way, we hear, and it's left her thirsting for payback. Her responsibilities were taken away weeks before her job was officially axed in last week's mass layoffs. Mountford is now planning to start a new consulting company, and we hear she hopes to reassemble her old Yahoo team, the user-experience group known as "Yhaus," before they scatter. There's just one hitch to her comeback strategy.

Mountford is shopping ideas she developed at Yahoo up and down Sand Hill Road, according to people who have seen the presentations to VCs. Her presentation closely resembles work she previously demonstrated to Yahoo executives. That may well attract attention from Yahoo's lawyers. Mountford would do well to be more cautious: Besides the misuse of work she did for Yahoo, her habit of hiring good-looking young men, and sleeping with them, might come up.