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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: A lawsuit brought by the world's largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, and handled on appeal (as are all patent cases), by the notoriously awful Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) may have actually killed off software patents. The ruling came from a judge that has ruled over patent cases since the 1980s, and it appears he's been born again into the anti-software patent world. Judge Mayer pointed out that the First Amendment says that "some" patents should not be allowed. The whole concurrence is worth reading, starting with the First Amendment argument -- which is kind of fascinating in that it goes well beyond what most people had talked about in the past concerning software patents. Judge Mayer makes the point that basically all software is unpatentable because software is "a form of language," which we don't patent: "All software implemented on a standard computer should be deemed categorically outside the bounds of Section 101. ("Section 101" is 35 U.S. Code; 101 is the part that governs patents.) The central problem with affording patent protection to generically-implemented software is that standard computers have long been ceded to the public domain .... Because generic computers are ubiquitous and indispensable, in effect the 'basic tool []' of modern life, they are not subject to the patent monopoly. In the section 101 calculus, adding software (which is as abstract as language) to a conventional computer (which rightfully resides in the public domain) results in a patent eligibility score of zero .... Software lies in the antechamber of patentable invention. Because generically-implemented software is an 'idea' insufficiently linked to any defining physical structure other than a standard computer, it is a precursor to technology rather than technology itself."

Last week you had a chance to ask co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, questions before his live Q&A. Below you'll find his answers to a few of the highest rated. Make sure you come back today from 12-12:30pm PDT (3-3:30pm ET, 19:00-19:30 GMT) to ask him whatever you like in real time. We'll have a new story for your questions at that time. What's it like being "evil"?
by Sarten-X

From working at big bad Microsoft to founding a patent-focused lab, you seem like an ideal person to answer a question I've had for a while: What's it like working in companies that are constantly under attack from those who try to claim a moral high ground?

To clarify, I don't mean to imply that you are evil, or that Microsoft or Intellectual Ventures are harming society, but rather I recognize that such accusations are common, regardless of truth. On the one hand, I don't assume that the FOSS fanatics (including myself at times) are always right about how bad Microsoft is, or the free-IP crowd is always right about how patents are crushing us, but at the same time I find it hard to believe they're always wrong, too. I'm curious what kind of moral dilemmas you encounter in this respect, if any, and what insight you might be able to provide as to life on the receiving end of the activists' assaults.

NATHAN: First, thanks for implying I may not be evil. I appreciate it. Most people think I’m crazy for entering this lion’s den. But look, if I wanted to be popular, I would have gone to a chef’s convention!

The fact is that I have more in common with you guys on /. than you might think. This is a community populated by engineers and technologists, not Luddites. You love great ideas. So do I. We may differ on the *economic value* of those great ideas, but I think this group debates innovation with the same passion and rigor that I do.

Here is an analogy – which isn’t perfect, but I think it captures the flavor of your question – it’s like being American and hearing international criticism.

When you turn on the news it’s certainly not uncommon to see demonstrations by people burning flags and declaring their hatred of America. North Korea is the most recent example, but it happens all the time. Analogous demonstrations occur all over the world – even in prosperous western democracies like France.

While people calling for your death is concerning, it doesn’t automatically follow that I should take it personally as an American citizen. More often than not these are manifestations of ideological struggles. It is more about what America symbolizes than anything. Most of their angst is directed against the political idea of “America” and what it means in the world rather than tangible acts by individual Americans.

At Microsoft, we were on the receiving end of this as well. Obviously I was aware of that, but it was hard to take all of the hatred seriously for the same reason that it is hard to take all of the criticism of America personally.

If you’re a “superpower,” a market leader or disruptive agent of change you’re going to catch some shit. Some of it may be due to legitimate complaints about certain things said “superpower” does. Microsoft wasn’t (and isn’t) infallible. Nor is the US government. But a lot of it is going to be reacting to the abstract idea that Microsoft is a “superpower”.

Even if you disagree about the source of the criticism, your question was how does it *feel* to be in a company that is hated. Well, I think that the feeling is very similar to how I feel about being an American when my country is hated. I was (and remain) very proud of what I did at Microsoft. The other people there were great, and on the whole did great work.

The same goes for Intellectual Ventures. When the critical remarks become too shrill or over the top, it is just hard to take it seriously as anything approaching constructive criticism.

Also, I’m willing to take on that personal risk of negative attention and stay on the pointy edge of these debates because I know very well that what I’m doing is risky. A) I’m creating a capital market for invention that has never existed before and B) I’m investing in inventions! Inventions take decades to bear fruit and let’s face it, history says they are more likely to fail than they are to succeed. But that’s the thrill of it. Gambling on those great ideas and watching which ones win. Kymeta is one I’m particularly proud of. They just signed up their first customer.



Is the Patent System broken?
by eldavojohn

Many readers of Slashdot (myself included) feel that the patent system is broken. I haven't heard any criticisms from you or Intellectual Ventures so I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about the patent system. Is it fundamentally broken? Only a little broken? Working flawlessly and exactly as it was intended to work??

NATHAN: No, I do not think the U.S. patent system is broken.

That is taken for granted by a lot of people, but frankly there isn’t any evidence that on a wide spread basis that it is “broken”.

People may “feel” that way (as you put it) but in my view that is mostly based on a couple of things:

1. Recounting anecdotes about a specific bad patent. There are lots of stories about patents that never should have been granted. These are used to imply that all patents are bad. Well, of course there are a few patents that should not have been granted, but isolated anecdotes don’t indict a whole system. Indeed you can always find an anecdote to support virtually any proposition. Statistics matter, and you can’t use rare cases to draw sweeping conclusions.

2. Plus, many of the stories about bad patents don’t actually tell the real story. While there are some bad patents out there, it turns out that many of the specific cases that are used to illustrate how “broken” the patent system are not told correctly. Some stories turn out to be factually wrong; some are fabricated entirely. In other cases the story that is told is true as far as it is told, but the whole story isn’t out there. A complete understanding of the story often leads to a different conclusion.

3. Not knowing how to read a patent. Say you aren’t a programmer and you try to read some code – say in C – you could probably sort of understand some of it because “if”, “else” and similar constructs can be interpreted a bit using their English language meaning. But you can’t really understand the code that way. Well, a patent is similar. The language used to write patent claims is basically English, but the specific interpretation is couched in patent law. When a technical person who isn’t familiar with patent law reads a patent they often come away with a misunderstanding of what the patent actually covers – usually thinking that it is much broader than it actually is. This gives the impression that the patent covers things it doesn’t, and then leads to the impression that it is overly broad, obvious and shouldn’t have been granted.

4. An axe to grind. Many of the people claiming that the patent system is broken feel that way because they have an agenda. As one example, many large technology companies have taken other people’s inventions and used them to make billions. They don’t want to pay. So they have an agenda to attack the patent system – that is both easier and cheaper than to pay what they owe. Open source advocates have a similar agenda – they fear that their favorite open source project may be threatened by patents. Once you have an agenda to minimize or marginalize patents, it is easy to see the system as broken.

5. Revisionist history. One of the funny arguments that people make is that patents are supposed to be there to help product-making companies. The U.S. Constitution predated the Industrial Revolution and the creation of the US patent system in 1787 was designed to protect the inventor, not corporations (or practicing entities as the IP industry is fond of calling them now). The idea of patents is to give incentive to inventors.

6. Ideology. Some people have an intellectual or ideological problem with intangible intellectual property. For example, some people hate copyright. Well, there are some that hate patents also.

These are just some of the pitfalls in the “patents are broken” argument as it is typically presented.

Is the system perfect? No, it isn’t.

The patent office has had funding issues. In recent years Congress has raided the patent office fees and taken them to spend elsewhere rather than let them be used to improve the patent office.

In some industries – say biotech and pharmaceuticals – the system works reasonably well in its main point, which is to give economic motivation to people inventing new things. No pharma company would invest in a new drug, especially the huge cost of clinical trials, without having some exclusivity.

Millions of people are alive today because of the patented medical innovations created by this incentive system. While it may not be perfect (what is?), it is has been remarkably successful. The majority of people reading this post have had their lives or those of a close family member saved by a patented medicine.

Within computer technology, the system of granting patents works reasonably well. The system of getting an inventor paid isn’t that great because historically speaking giant technology companies steal a lot of inventions and don’t pay for them.

This is changing somewhat because big tech companies like Microsoft and Apple are now enforcing patents as a part of their business strategy, but there is still a strong segment of the tech industry that doesn’t want to pay inventors.

The ideal system would be a meritocracy where inventors would get paid for their work. That is what makes the incentive system work. Failing to pay hurts the effectiveness of the system overall.



Re:what are the differences from the past?
by alexander_686

Those patents were for making things and scope was well defined. First, the newer set of patents tend to be for ideas and business processes and are not well defined and tend to be broad. I forget the details, but somebody has a patent for transmitting images over a network which in theory covers almost every moving image on the internet – and this was not for a specific method, code, or algorithm of doing so – just the general idea. Second, devices are getting more complex and interrelated. A cell phone needs patents covering data transmission, networking protocols, digital camera, OS, etc. Throw on top of that design patents (look and feel) and it is a real mess.

NATHAN: This may be a bit controversial, but the reality is that the patent system was the world’s first experiment with open source.

The idea of the patent system is that after a period of time (typically 20 years) the invention passes into the public domain. The inventor must share enough information in the patent to allow somebody to recreate the invention. Indeed, the word “patent” originates from the Latin “patere,” which means "to lay open".

The 20 year exclusive period acts as an economic incentive for the inventor to share the information. The incentive is necessary because otherwise an inventor could keep an invention secret. The incentive is reasonable because invention is expensive and risky. It often takes a lot of failure before you get it right. Patents are a way to simultaneously protect and distribute the ideas for usage, assuming the original inventor gets compensated for their work. There’s the rub. What’s so wrong with making sure the inventor gets compensated for their hard work? Why is that such a problem?

We have plenty of tech companies now that offer free massages, lunch, dry-cleaning and a myriad of other things to their employees. Have you seen their margins? Do you really think they can’t afford to pay an inventor for their work? I’m not talking about huge percentages either. Licensing patents represent only a *fraction* of a product’s overall costs, when you tally up development, materials, production, marketing, distribution, and so forth. But the fact of the matter remains, these companies are standing on the shoulders of those who came before without proper compensation even though their work is being used in a product by thousands or even millions of people.

Calling patents a system similar to open source may seem odd, because most current open source software has no period of exclusivity. Open source software as typically practiced is a private system that people willingly enter into. If they don’t want to ask for benefit other that participation and recognition that is great – but their CHOICE to do what they want with their creative output is fully consistent with copyright law.

In fact, that is a very instructive case. Not so long ago many people now associated with the open source software community hated copyright. They wanted to copy code, and thought it was terrible that software could be protected by copyright. Richard Stallman in particular argued strongly against copyright.

Then, a funny thing happened. People in the open source community figured out that by cleverly adopting a copyright license they could actually protect the openness of the code. Suddenly copyright went from something that was hated to something that is an essential part of the legal framework that lets open source work.

I believe that something like that is possible with patents too. At the moment many people in the open source movement disapprove of patents. I believe that this is an echo of the anti-copyright sentiment. But ultimately I think that it is just as misguided – that far from being a problem for open source, patents could make a net-positive contribution.



Can you present examples of how IV has helped individual inventors to get revenue from their inventions?
by patmandu

Please include specific names, specific inventions, approximate revenue seen by the inventor, and current status of the invention-related product(s) and ownership of the patent(s).

NATHAN: Intellectual Ventures has paid out $400 million to individual inventors to date, where our business model involves purchasing either A) a patent application to prosecute (note that “prosecuting” a patent means applying to the patent office to get a patent granted – people think that it means litigation, but that’s not the way the term is used); or B) a patent outright.

Here are some examples:

Rebecca Taylor, an inventor from Austin, received her first patent for an embedded software translation machine that streamlines data sharing and eliminates code bloat to create efficient communication between devices. When a deal fell through to sell this invention to another big tech company, a chance meeting with me brought her to Intellectual Ventures instead. She sold her patent to us and fund both her son’s college education and her own graduate studies in public policy. Taylor is currently serving as senior adviser for innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science & Technology Adviser to the Secretary.

Lev Bolotin, an inventor & entrepreneur based near us in Seattle, and Matthew Whitten, an inventor and software engineer from Maine, both chose Intellectual Ventures because it was the only company that could both monetize and build up a significant IP portfolio for their startups. Both have used the cash from these deals to finance their ventures. In Bolotin’s words: “Intellectual Ventures proved to the business community that IP can be trusted as an asset. It can be bought and sold. IV has established a value reference for IP—and that is priceless!”

There are other great examples of the individual inventors we work with here.

I’ll also take this opportunity to point out that the most important inventors we work with are Intellectual Ventures employees. We have nuclear physicists, rocket scientists, neurosurgeons, chemists, and mathematicians roaming our halls. Many have hundreds of patents worldwide to their name. Many more have PhDs.



Results
by Matt_Bennett

What products have Intellectual Ventures developed and brought to market?

NATHAN: Intellectual Ventures is focused on invention, not making products itself.

In terms of new inventions filed before the patent office in 2012, we were the 4th company in the US, and 16th worldwide.

Some of those inventions are suitable for starting new companies. We have created two spin out companies so far, Kymeta, which makes a radical new metamaterial antenna that will revolutionize mobile bandwidth, and TerraPower, which is commercializing our invention of a new type of clean and safe nuclear power plant.

Most inventions, even great ones, are not suitable for founding a company. In those cases we license the patents, typically on a non-exclusive basis, to dozens of companies. Most market-leading technology products contain inventions that Intellectual Ventures has licensed.

Some people don’t like the idea of invention without making products. I don’t really see why. By specializing in invention, and investing in invention, we can be better at it than companies that focus on the commercialization.

Another weird aspect of this is that very few US-based companies actually *make* products. Apple doesn’t make iPhones. They design them, and then they contract for others to make them. The actual MAKING is done by companies in China.

As another example, a venture capital company does not make products. Neither does a mutual fund company. They simply invest in others.

So, if a mutual fund like Fidelity owns stock in Apple, Intel, Microsoft and others, people don’t seem to have a problem with it. Their investment enables those companies to make their products (or contract for them to be made).

If a venture firm like Benchmark or Kleiner Perkins invests in tech startups, nobody has a problem. Again, the investment enables them.

Well, we license patents to Apple, Intel, Microsoft and others. That enables them too. And we start new companies, enabling them to make products.



Relationship to Oasis Research and Lodsys?
by eldavojohn

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

NATHAN: We routinely sell our patents either individually or in full portfolios. These are called divestitures in the asset management world and we consider our patent holdings our assets. We sold patents to Oasis and Lodsys.

At the time we bought those assets, anybody else could have bought them. At the time we sold them, the same thing is true. Before selling them we had licensed a number of companies to these patents. Those companies, or others, could have bought the patents to use them strategically, or simply to hold them as a service to their developer communities.

It happens that Lodsys and Oasis bought them, and they chose to pursue patent assertion, and also litigation. I have no control over what they would do with the patents.

In a perfect world we could make money without any side effects, and the buyers of our patents would not cause as much controversy as those sales have done. Here on planet earth things are far from perfect, and that is not what happened. I re-learned an important management lesson from This American Life: I cannot control every outcome, but I certainly take responsibility for it.

On one hand, I don’t feel a bit ashamed that Intellectual Ventures could make a return on those investments for us and for our investors. We bought the assets originally, we licensed them, and then we sold them. That is how the market works.

On the other hand, I feel that even though I don’t control them, I do take responsibility for the backlash it created. As CEO, it’s my job to determine whether that’s the best business practice moving forward. We will most definitely continue to divest assets since there is market demand, but the company will be looking more closely at the *how* we do it and under what terms.



Mosquitoes
by Skewray

The Photonic Fence project was proposed with much fanfare about six years ago, to rid Africa is disease-carrying mosquitoes. Rumor has it that the Gates Foundation has cut funding. The project appears to have developed nothing of practical use, although the project leaders responsible appear to still be in control. Is there going to be a serious forensic analysis of how the project went south?

NATHAN: Actually, we have many anti-malaria projects, and the photonic fence is just one of them. We have been successful in proving the basic concept – that you can identify, track and kill a mosquito using lasers – in a lab setting, so now we’re looking at the best way to apply the technology.

There are some significant hurdles to deploying something like this in developing countries, so it might end up that the technology is used more for research purposes to understand mosquitoes.

We’re still figuring that out and talking with potential commercial partners, but one of the important things about the photonic fence is that we got people thinking and talking about malaria prevention in new ways. That’s one of the values of inventing. It’s an inherently risky activity, but even inventions that don’t ultimately work out as you expected challenge people to think about problems in new ways and open up new possibilities to explore.

It is important to remember that not every project will work out! We are still working on the photonic fence, but it may be an idea that is flawed, or maybe it will work in the future but it is ahead of its time. When you invent you take that sort of risk.



Philanthropic work
by jaiyen

As you've already made your fortune, I'm curious as to why you choose to get involved in controversial patent licensing, rather than, say, Bill Gates style philanthropic work?

NATHAN: First, I think that what we are doing at Intellectual Ventures is a very important and beneficial thing for the world. If we can establish what I like to call the “invention capital” market and get more funding to inventors, it would have an impact similar to the creation of the venture capital market.

So, far from this being simply a way to make money, I think that establishing invention capital is a very important contribution. I’ve written an article in Harvard Business Review about this: [http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/news/media-coverage/funding-eureka]. That doesn’t mean that it is the same as Bill’s philanthropy, but I think it is still a very worthy thing to do.

Bill is one of my closest friends, a mentor and also an investor in many of our projects. I admire the work he is doing with his Foundation. So much so in fact, that we decided to partner a few years ago to tackle some of the biggest problems Bill and Melinda want to solve. So we have a project called Global Good that focuses specifically on the inventions required to save lives in developing countries.

Frankly we think we serve the developing world better by focusing our expertise than via traditional philanthropy. So far, we have done work on the photonic fence (which I described in my response to Skewray), cold-chain storage technology for vaccines and modeling software for infectious diseases.



Traveling wave reactors vs (and) thorium
by DPajak

Mr. Myhrvold: I know you are sold on traveling wave reactors, and I hope they prove their worth. But, I was wondering; have you given up on thorium-powered reactors? I saw an article in Forbes not too long ago where the author actually argued that, because it would turn thorium from an expensive-to-dispose-of-waste-product into a valuable resource, building thorium reactors could make electronics cheaper. This is because thorium is usually present in rare earth metals used for electronics and often have to be removed prior to processing. Have you considered running a similar kind of reactor to traveling wave on a thorium-uranium mixture (that would also deal with the problem of thorium being "fertile" as opposed to "fissile")? If thorium-powered reactors reduced the price of manufacturing electric vehicles, you would have the added benefit of cheaper EVs. This would not only reduce carbon emissions even further and faster; it would put more demand on the electricity grid as more people switched over to EVs from internal combustion powered cars. This would mean we w’ould need even more electricity generation and less fossil fuels; we could build more of both the thorium reactors like LFTRs and traveling wave reactors to meet the demand. Finally, as everyone knows, thorium is far more common in the earth's crust than uranium. It seems to me using thorium-powered reactors to compliment your reactor concepts like traveling wave reactors would speed up the process you are trying to create, namely, the decarbonization of first the United States first, and then the world. I see no reason why both uranium and thorium reactors are not necessary. What are your thoughts? And is Intellectual Ventures pursuing R&D on thorium, as well?

NATHAN: Thoughtful question, thank you. We did explore thorium in the conceptual designs for the travelling wave reactor at TerraPower.

The neutronics of a thorium reaction are not quite the same as for uranium, and as a result it is a lot more challenging to engineer a thorium based system. That said, we have invented what we believe is the best thorium based reactor out there, and would love to pursue it at some point.

The nuclear power community is quite conservative – and rightly so – so we have tried to make the best design we can get into service quickly, and that is a uranium based system.

Also, while Th is much more common than U in the crust as you point out, our TerraPower reactor can use depleted uranium, and even use spent fuel rods as a source. As a result there is PLENTY of fuel for our reactors for the foreseeable future. Eventually, we would like to see both U and Th systems out there.



Sense of Accomplishment
by PaddyM

As a software engineer, I produce solutions to different problems every day which are then implemented and used by people. If my resulting software was not used by anyone, I would not gain much fulfillment in my work. Considering that much of the work done by Intellectual Ventures does not result in actual tangible products, do you still get a sense of accomplishment? Are you prouder of the ideas which actually get implemented? Or are you satisfied with the ideas that are developed, independent of whether they result in viable products or not?

NATHAN: Excellent question. I absolutely do get a sense of accomplishment. But it’s a more delayed sense of accomplishment. This brings up a really important distinction I think that needs to be made. I firmly believe that ideas are ends in and of themselves. Sure they might go on to live their lives as part of a product down the road, but even if it doesn’t make it into a product it is not deprived of its intrinsic value. No idea = no product in the first place. Intellectual exploration doesn’t require the validation a product does.

While there are many VCs out there expecting returns in just a handful of years, we work on a much longer timeline. So the stepping stones and ideas that might not seem relevant or directly applicable now may be 20 years from now—we aren’t entirely sure about that. I have to be satisfied with that. Even though an idea doesn’t make it into a product this year or next isn’t automatic failure to me.

As an inventor and as someone in the business of ideas, you have to be satisfied with failure. And in a weird way, that has to be part of your sense of accomplishment. Knowing that each failure means you’re one step closer to getting it right.

Also, there’s great satisfaction in taking the journey in the first place. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Take the scientific research community for example. A lot of the glory in research comes from being first to get your idea published in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s a race. And ideas are the same way. I want to win, but I don’t always. But it’s good to at least be part of the race.



Science of cooking food
by peter303

One of the TV news magazines showed some of the things you learned about new, scientific ways of cooking food. What was the most amazing thing, in your opinion, that you discovered?

NATHAN: I’ll be honest, I can’t pick one thing - I learned so much as I worked on Modernist Cuisine. But I’m betting this crowd will like these two:

1. Try decanting your wine with an ordinary kitchen blender. It’s pretty amazing. I just pour the wine in, frappé away at the highest power setting for 30 to 60 seconds, and then allow the froth to subside (which happens quickly) before serving. We call it “hyperdecanting.” One reason to do is to improve the taste of a young red wine, but the other big benefit is the looks on people’s faces! People are so conservative about wine – they treat it with this odd reverence – that when you put in a blender a lot of folks just freak out.

2. Perhaps you have an ultrasonic bath lying around? (Finally! I’ve been waiting for an audience that might actually apply to!) Try using it to make French fries. Unbelievably delicious.



One inventor question:
by Tablizer

where's our f@!&# flying cars?

NATHAN: Seriously. Where the f@!&# are they? I want one too!

The serious answer to the question is that flying is really hard to do. Look at driving a car. It is easy enough that everybody does it, but also hard enough that we kill ~30,000 people a year on the road. We take this for granted, but it is a huge problem.

Flying is much safer because the FAA went nuts on safety, and on qualifications. Flying in a commercial jet is much safer than driving your own car. In a perfect world, you would spend some of the effort made to make airplanes safe to make our cars safer.

FAA regulations make it virtually impossible for anybody to make a flying car that is a realistic consumer product. It’s also hard to do intrinsically – flight is very challenging.

Even though flying is much safer, it is still hard to do – most accidents are pilot error. The same thing is true for cars. The problem is leaving the human in the loop.

I am very excited by self-driving cars pioneered by the DARPA Grand Challenge, and now experimented with by Google and others.

The next big step in safer cars is going to be making them drive themselves.

Airplanes, and especially helicopters, need this approach too.

Maybe once that technology is mature we can get a flying car.

Last week you had a chance to ask co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, questions before his live Q&A. Below you'll find his answers to a few of the highest rated. Make sure you come back today from 12-12:30pm PDT (3-3:30pm ET, 19:00-19:30 GMT) to ask him whatever you like in real time. We'll have a new story for your questions at that time. What's it like being "evil"?
by Sarten-X

From working at big bad Microsoft to founding a patent-focused lab, you seem like an ideal person to answer a question I've had for a while: What's it like working in companies that are constantly under attack from those who try to claim a moral high ground?

To clarify, I don't mean to imply that you are evil, or that Microsoft or Intellectual Ventures are harming society, but rather I recognize that such accusations are common, regardless of truth. On the one hand, I don't assume that the FOSS fanatics (including myself at times) are always right about how bad Microsoft is, or the free-IP crowd is always right about how patents are crushing us, but at the same time I find it hard to believe they're always wrong, too. I'm curious what kind of moral dilemmas you encounter in this respect, if any, and what insight you might be able to provide as to life on the receiving end of the activists' assaults.

NATHAN: First, thanks for implying I may not be evil. I appreciate it. Most people think I’m crazy for entering this lion’s den. But look, if I wanted to be popular, I would have gone to a chef’s convention!

The fact is that I have more in common with you guys on /. than you might think. This is a community populated by engineers and technologists, not Luddites. You love great ideas. So do I. We may differ on the *economic value* of those great ideas, but I think this group debates innovation with the same passion and rigor that I do.

Here is an analogy – which isn’t perfect, but I think it captures the flavor of your question – it’s like being American and hearing international criticism.

When you turn on the news it’s certainly not uncommon to see demonstrations by people burning flags and declaring their hatred of America. North Korea is the most recent example, but it happens all the time. Analogous demonstrations occur all over the world – even in prosperous western democracies like France.

While people calling for your death is concerning, it doesn’t automatically follow that I should take it personally as an American citizen. More often than not these are manifestations of ideological struggles. It is more about what America symbolizes than anything. Most of their angst is directed against the political idea of “America” and what it means in the world rather than tangible acts by individual Americans.

At Microsoft, we were on the receiving end of this as well. Obviously I was aware of that, but it was hard to take all of the hatred seriously for the same reason that it is hard to take all of the criticism of America personally.

If you’re a “superpower,” a market leader or disruptive agent of change you’re going to catch some shit. Some of it may be due to legitimate complaints about certain things said “superpower” does. Microsoft wasn’t (and isn’t) infallible. Nor is the US government. But a lot of it is going to be reacting to the abstract idea that Microsoft is a “superpower”.

Even if you disagree about the source of the criticism, your question was how does it *feel* to be in a company that is hated. Well, I think that the feeling is very similar to how I feel about being an American when my country is hated. I was (and remain) very proud of what I did at Microsoft. The other people there were great, and on the whole did great work.

The same goes for Intellectual Ventures. When the critical remarks become too shrill or over the top, it is just hard to take it seriously as anything approaching constructive criticism.

Also, I’m willing to take on that personal risk of negative attention and stay on the pointy edge of these debates because I know very well that what I’m doing is risky. A) I’m creating a capital market for invention that has never existed before and B) I’m investing in inventions! Inventions take decades to bear fruit and let’s face it, history says they are more likely to fail than they are to succeed. But that’s the thrill of it. Gambling on those great ideas and watching which ones win. Kymeta is one I’m particularly proud of. They just signed up their first customer.



Is the Patent System broken?
by eldavojohn

Many readers of Slashdot (myself included) feel that the patent system is broken. I haven't heard any criticisms from you or Intellectual Ventures so I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about the patent system. Is it fundamentally broken? Only a little broken? Working flawlessly and exactly as it was intended to work??

NATHAN: No, I do not think the U.S. patent system is broken.

That is taken for granted by a lot of people, but frankly there isn’t any evidence that on a wide spread basis that it is “broken”.

People may “feel” that way (as you put it) but in my view that is mostly based on a couple of things:

1. Recounting anecdotes about a specific bad patent. There are lots of stories about patents that never should have been granted. These are used to imply that all patents are bad. Well, of course there are a few patents that should not have been granted, but isolated anecdotes don’t indict a whole system. Indeed you can always find an anecdote to support virtually any proposition. Statistics matter, and you can’t use rare cases to draw sweeping conclusions.

2. Plus, many of the stories about bad patents don’t actually tell the real story. While there are some bad patents out there, it turns out that many of the specific cases that are used to illustrate how “broken” the patent system are not told correctly. Some stories turn out to be factually wrong; some are fabricated entirely. In other cases the story that is told is true as far as it is told, but the whole story isn’t out there. A complete understanding of the story often leads to a different conclusion.

3. Not knowing how to read a patent. Say you aren’t a programmer and you try to read some code – say in C – you could probably sort of understand some of it because “if”, “else” and similar constructs can be interpreted a bit using their English language meaning. But you can’t really understand the code that way. Well, a patent is similar. The language used to write patent claims is basically English, but the specific interpretation is couched in patent law. When a technical person who isn’t familiar with patent law reads a patent they often come away with a misunderstanding of what the patent actually covers – usually thinking that it is much broader than it actually is. This gives the impression that the patent covers things it doesn’t, and then leads to the impression that it is overly broad, obvious and shouldn’t have been granted.

4. An axe to grind. Many of the people claiming that the patent system is broken feel that way because they have an agenda. As one example, many large technology companies have taken other people’s inventions and used them to make billions. They don’t want to pay. So they have an agenda to attack the patent system – that is both easier and cheaper than to pay what they owe. Open source advocates have a similar agenda – they fear that their favorite open source project may be threatened by patents. Once you have an agenda to minimize or marginalize patents, it is easy to see the system as broken.

5. Revisionist history. One of the funny arguments that people make is that patents are supposed to be there to help product-making companies. The U.S. Constitution predated the Industrial Revolution and the creation of the US patent system in 1787 was designed to protect the inventor, not corporations (or practicing entities as the IP industry is fond of calling them now). The idea of patents is to give incentive to inventors.

6. Ideology. Some people have an intellectual or ideological problem with intangible intellectual property. For example, some people hate copyright. Well, there are some that hate patents also.

These are just some of the pitfalls in the “patents are broken” argument as it is typically presented.

Is the system perfect? No, it isn’t.

The patent office has had funding issues. In recent years Congress has raided the patent office fees and taken them to spend elsewhere rather than let them be used to improve the patent office.

In some industries – say biotech and pharmaceuticals – the system works reasonably well in its main point, which is to give economic motivation to people inventing new things. No pharma company would invest in a new drug, especially the huge cost of clinical trials, without having some exclusivity.

Millions of people are alive today because of the patented medical innovations created by this incentive system. While it may not be perfect (what is?), it is has been remarkably successful. The majority of people reading this post have had their lives or those of a close family member saved by a patented medicine.

Within computer technology, the system of granting patents works reasonably well. The system of getting an inventor paid isn’t that great because historically speaking giant technology companies steal a lot of inventions and don’t pay for them.

This is changing somewhat because big tech companies like Microsoft and Apple are now enforcing patents as a part of their business strategy, but there is still a strong segment of the tech industry that doesn’t want to pay inventors.

The ideal system would be a meritocracy where inventors would get paid for their work. That is what makes the incentive system work. Failing to pay hurts the effectiveness of the system overall.



Re:what are the differences from the past?
by alexander_686

Those patents were for making things and scope was well defined. First, the newer set of patents tend to be for ideas and business processes and are not well defined and tend to be broad. I forget the details, but somebody has a patent for transmitting images over a network which in theory covers almost every moving image on the internet – and this was not for a specific method, code, or algorithm of doing so – just the general idea. Second, devices are getting more complex and interrelated. A cell phone needs patents covering data transmission, networking protocols, digital camera, OS, etc. Throw on top of that design patents (look and feel) and it is a real mess.

NATHAN: This may be a bit controversial, but the reality is that the patent system was the world’s first experiment with open source.

The idea of the patent system is that after a period of time (typically 20 years) the invention passes into the public domain. The inventor must share enough information in the patent to allow somebody to recreate the invention. Indeed, the word “patent” originates from the Latin “patere,” which means "to lay open".

The 20 year exclusive period acts as an economic incentive for the inventor to share the information. The incentive is necessary because otherwise an inventor could keep an invention secret. The incentive is reasonable because invention is expensive and risky. It often takes a lot of failure before you get it right. Patents are a way to simultaneously protect and distribute the ideas for usage, assuming the original inventor gets compensated for their work. There’s the rub. What’s so wrong with making sure the inventor gets compensated for their hard work? Why is that such a problem?

We have plenty of tech companies now that offer free massages, lunch, dry-cleaning and a myriad of other things to their employees. Have you seen their margins? Do you really think they can’t afford to pay an inventor for their work? I’m not talking about huge percentages either. Licensing patents represent only a *fraction* of a product’s overall costs, when you tally up development, materials, production, marketing, distribution, and so forth. But the fact of the matter remains, these companies are standing on the shoulders of those who came before without proper compensation even though their work is being used in a product by thousands or even millions of people.

Calling patents a system similar to open source may seem odd, because most current open source software has no period of exclusivity. Open source software as typically practiced is a private system that people willingly enter into. If they don’t want to ask for benefit other that participation and recognition that is great – but their CHOICE to do what they want with their creative output is fully consistent with copyright law.

In fact, that is a very instructive case. Not so long ago many people now associated with the open source software community hated copyright. They wanted to copy code, and thought it was terrible that software could be protected by copyright. Richard Stallman in particular argued strongly against copyright.

Then, a funny thing happened. People in the open source community figured out that by cleverly adopting a copyright license they could actually protect the openness of the code. Suddenly copyright went from something that was hated to something that is an essential part of the legal framework that lets open source work.

I believe that something like that is possible with patents too. At the moment many people in the open source movement disapprove of patents. I believe that this is an echo of the anti-copyright sentiment. But ultimately I think that it is just as misguided – that far from being a problem for open source, patents could make a net-positive contribution.



Can you present examples of how IV has helped individual inventors to get revenue from their inventions?
by patmandu

Please include specific names, specific inventions, approximate revenue seen by the inventor, and current status of the invention-related product(s) and ownership of the patent(s).

NATHAN: Intellectual Ventures has paid out $400 million to individual inventors to date, where our business model involves purchasing either A) a patent application to prosecute (note that “prosecuting” a patent means applying to the patent office to get a patent granted – people think that it means litigation, but that’s not the way the term is used); or B) a patent outright.

Here are some examples:

Rebecca Taylor, an inventor from Austin, received her first patent for an embedded software translation machine that streamlines data sharing and eliminates code bloat to create efficient communication between devices. When a deal fell through to sell this invention to another big tech company, a chance meeting with me brought her to Intellectual Ventures instead. She sold her patent to us and fund both her son’s college education and her own graduate studies in public policy. Taylor is currently serving as senior adviser for innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science & Technology Adviser to the Secretary.

Lev Bolotin, an inventor & entrepreneur based near us in Seattle, and Matthew Whitten, an inventor and software engineer from Maine, both chose Intellectual Ventures because it was the only company that could both monetize and build up a significant IP portfolio for their startups. Both have used the cash from these deals to finance their ventures. In Bolotin’s words: “Intellectual Ventures proved to the business community that IP can be trusted as an asset. It can be bought and sold. IV has established a value reference for IP—and that is priceless!”

There are other great examples of the individual inventors we work with here.

I’ll also take this opportunity to point out that the most important inventors we work with are Intellectual Ventures employees. We have nuclear physicists, rocket scientists, neurosurgeons, chemists, and mathematicians roaming our halls. Many have hundreds of patents worldwide to their name. Many more have PhDs.



Results
by Matt_Bennett

What products have Intellectual Ventures developed and brought to market?

NATHAN: Intellectual Ventures is focused on invention, not making products itself.

In terms of new inventions filed before the patent office in 2012, we were the 4th company in the US, and 16th worldwide.

Some of those inventions are suitable for starting new companies. We have created two spin out companies so far, Kymeta, which makes a radical new metamaterial antenna that will revolutionize mobile bandwidth, and TerraPower, which is commercializing our invention of a new type of clean and safe nuclear power plant.

Most inventions, even great ones, are not suitable for founding a company. In those cases we license the patents, typically on a non-exclusive basis, to dozens of companies. Most market-leading technology products contain inventions that Intellectual Ventures has licensed.

Some people don’t like the idea of invention without making products. I don’t really see why. By specializing in invention, and investing in invention, we can be better at it than companies that focus on the commercialization.

Another weird aspect of this is that very few US-based companies actually *make* products. Apple doesn’t make iPhones. They design them, and then they contract for others to make them. The actual MAKING is done by companies in China.

As another example, a venture capital company does not make products. Neither does a mutual fund company. They simply invest in others.

So, if a mutual fund like Fidelity owns stock in Apple, Intel, Microsoft and others, people don’t seem to have a problem with it. Their investment enables those companies to make their products (or contract for them to be made).

If a venture firm like Benchmark or Kleiner Perkins invests in tech startups, nobody has a problem. Again, the investment enables them.

Well, we license patents to Apple, Intel, Microsoft and others. That enables them too. And we start new companies, enabling them to make products.



Relationship to Oasis Research and Lodsys?
by eldavojohn

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

NATHAN: We routinely sell our patents either individually or in full portfolios. These are called divestitures in the asset management world and we consider our patent holdings our assets. We sold patents to Oasis and Lodsys.

At the time we bought those assets, anybody else could have bought them. At the time we sold them, the same thing is true. Before selling them we had licensed a number of companies to these patents. Those companies, or others, could have bought the patents to use them strategically, or simply to hold them as a service to their developer communities.

It happens that Lodsys and Oasis bought them, and they chose to pursue patent assertion, and also litigation. I have no control over what they would do with the patents.

In a perfect world we could make money without any side effects, and the buyers of our patents would not cause as much controversy as those sales have done. Here on planet earth things are far from perfect, and that is not what happened. I re-learned an important management lesson from This American Life: I cannot control every outcome, but I certainly take responsibility for it.

On one hand, I don’t feel a bit ashamed that Intellectual Ventures could make a return on those investments for us and for our investors. We bought the assets originally, we licensed them, and then we sold them. That is how the market works.

On the other hand, I feel that even though I don’t control them, I do take responsibility for the backlash it created. As CEO, it’s my job to determine whether that’s the best business practice moving forward. We will most definitely continue to divest assets since there is market demand, but the company will be looking more closely at the *how* we do it and under what terms.



Mosquitoes
by Skewray

The Photonic Fence project was proposed with much fanfare about six years ago, to rid Africa is disease-carrying mosquitoes. Rumor has it that the Gates Foundation has cut funding. The project appears to have developed nothing of practical use, although the project leaders responsible appear to still be in control. Is there going to be a serious forensic analysis of how the project went south?

NATHAN: Actually, we have many anti-malaria projects, and the photonic fence is just one of them. We have been successful in proving the basic concept – that you can identify, track and kill a mosquito using lasers – in a lab setting, so now we’re looking at the best way to apply the technology.

There are some significant hurdles to deploying something like this in developing countries, so it might end up that the technology is used more for research purposes to understand mosquitoes.

We’re still figuring that out and talking with potential commercial partners, but one of the important things about the photonic fence is that we got people thinking and talking about malaria prevention in new ways. That’s one of the values of inventing. It’s an inherently risky activity, but even inventions that don’t ultimately work out as you expected challenge people to think about problems in new ways and open up new possibilities to explore.

It is important to remember that not every project will work out! We are still working on the photonic fence, but it may be an idea that is flawed, or maybe it will work in the future but it is ahead of its time. When you invent you take that sort of risk.



Philanthropic work
by jaiyen

As you've already made your fortune, I'm curious as to why you choose to get involved in controversial patent licensing, rather than, say, Bill Gates style philanthropic work?

NATHAN: First, I think that what we are doing at Intellectual Ventures is a very important and beneficial thing for the world. If we can establish what I like to call the “invention capital” market and get more funding to inventors, it would have an impact similar to the creation of the venture capital market.

So, far from this being simply a way to make money, I think that establishing invention capital is a very important contribution. I’ve written an article in Harvard Business Review about this: [http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/news/media-coverage/funding-eureka]. That doesn’t mean that it is the same as Bill’s philanthropy, but I think it is still a very worthy thing to do.

Bill is one of my closest friends, a mentor and also an investor in many of our projects. I admire the work he is doing with his Foundation. So much so in fact, that we decided to partner a few years ago to tackle some of the biggest problems Bill and Melinda want to solve. So we have a project called Global Good that focuses specifically on the inventions required to save lives in developing countries.

Frankly we think we serve the developing world better by focusing our expertise than via traditional philanthropy. So far, we have done work on the photonic fence (which I described in my response to Skewray), cold-chain storage technology for vaccines and modeling software for infectious diseases.



Traveling wave reactors vs (and) thorium
by DPajak

Mr. Myhrvold: I know you are sold on traveling wave reactors, and I hope they prove their worth. But, I was wondering; have you given up on thorium-powered reactors? I saw an article in Forbes not too long ago where the author actually argued that, because it would turn thorium from an expensive-to-dispose-of-waste-product into a valuable resource, building thorium reactors could make electronics cheaper. This is because thorium is usually present in rare earth metals used for electronics and often have to be removed prior to processing. Have you considered running a similar kind of reactor to traveling wave on a thorium-uranium mixture (that would also deal with the problem of thorium being "fertile" as opposed to "fissile")? If thorium-powered reactors reduced the price of manufacturing electric vehicles, you would have the added benefit of cheaper EVs. This would not only reduce carbon emissions even further and faster; it would put more demand on the electricity grid as more people switched over to EVs from internal combustion powered cars. This would mean we w’ould need even more electricity generation and less fossil fuels; we could build more of both the thorium reactors like LFTRs and traveling wave reactors to meet the demand. Finally, as everyone knows, thorium is far more common in the earth's crust than uranium. It seems to me using thorium-powered reactors to compliment your reactor concepts like traveling wave reactors would speed up the process you are trying to create, namely, the decarbonization of first the United States first, and then the world. I see no reason why both uranium and thorium reactors are not necessary. What are your thoughts? And is Intellectual Ventures pursuing R&D on thorium, as well?

NATHAN: Thoughtful question, thank you. We did explore thorium in the conceptual designs for the travelling wave reactor at TerraPower.

The neutronics of a thorium reaction are not quite the same as for uranium, and as a result it is a lot more challenging to engineer a thorium based system. That said, we have invented what we believe is the best thorium based reactor out there, and would love to pursue it at some point.

The nuclear power community is quite conservative – and rightly so – so we have tried to make the best design we can get into service quickly, and that is a uranium based system.

Also, while Th is much more common than U in the crust as you point out, our TerraPower reactor can use depleted uranium, and even use spent fuel rods as a source. As a result there is PLENTY of fuel for our reactors for the foreseeable future. Eventually, we would like to see both U and Th systems out there.



Sense of Accomplishment
by PaddyM

As a software engineer, I produce solutions to different problems every day which are then implemented and used by people. If my resulting software was not used by anyone, I would not gain much fulfillment in my work. Considering that much of the work done by Intellectual Ventures does not result in actual tangible products, do you still get a sense of accomplishment? Are you prouder of the ideas which actually get implemented? Or are you satisfied with the ideas that are developed, independent of whether they result in viable products or not?

NATHAN: Excellent question. I absolutely do get a sense of accomplishment. But it’s a more delayed sense of accomplishment. This brings up a really important distinction I think that needs to be made. I firmly believe that ideas are ends in and of themselves. Sure they might go on to live their lives as part of a product down the road, but even if it doesn’t make it into a product it is not deprived of its intrinsic value. No idea = no product in the first place. Intellectual exploration doesn’t require the validation a product does.

While there are many VCs out there expecting returns in just a handful of years, we work on a much longer timeline. So the stepping stones and ideas that might not seem relevant or directly applicable now may be 20 years from now—we aren’t entirely sure about that. I have to be satisfied with that. Even though an idea doesn’t make it into a product this year or next isn’t automatic failure to me.

As an inventor and as someone in the business of ideas, you have to be satisfied with failure. And in a weird way, that has to be part of your sense of accomplishment. Knowing that each failure means you’re one step closer to getting it right.

Also, there’s great satisfaction in taking the journey in the first place. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Take the scientific research community for example. A lot of the glory in research comes from being first to get your idea published in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s a race. And ideas are the same way. I want to win, but I don’t always. But it’s good to at least be part of the race.



Science of cooking food
by peter303

One of the TV news magazines showed some of the things you learned about new, scientific ways of cooking food. What was the most amazing thing, in your opinion, that you discovered?

NATHAN: I’ll be honest, I can’t pick one thing - I learned so much as I worked on Modernist Cuisine. But I’m betting this crowd will like these two:

1. Try decanting your wine with an ordinary kitchen blender. It’s pretty amazing. I just pour the wine in, frappé away at the highest power setting for 30 to 60 seconds, and then allow the froth to subside (which happens quickly) before serving. We call it “hyperdecanting.” One reason to do is to improve the taste of a young red wine, but the other big benefit is the looks on people’s faces! People are so conservative about wine – they treat it with this odd reverence – that when you put in a blender a lot of folks just freak out.

2. Perhaps you have an ultrasonic bath lying around? (Finally! I’ve been waiting for an audience that might actually apply to!) Try using it to make French fries. Unbelievably delicious.



One inventor question:
by Tablizer

where's our f@!&# flying cars?

NATHAN: Seriously. Where the f@!&# are they? I want one too!

The serious answer to the question is that flying is really hard to do. Look at driving a car. It is easy enough that everybody does it, but also hard enough that we kill ~30,000 people a year on the road. We take this for granted, but it is a huge problem.

Flying is much safer because the FAA went nuts on safety, and on qualifications. Flying in a commercial jet is much safer than driving your own car. In a perfect world, you would spend some of the effort made to make airplanes safe to make our cars safer.

FAA regulations make it virtually impossible for anybody to make a flying car that is a realistic consumer product. It’s also hard to do intrinsically – flight is very challenging.

Even though flying is much safer, it is still hard to do – most accidents are pilot error. The same thing is true for cars. The problem is leaving the human in the loop.

I am very excited by self-driving cars pioneered by the DARPA Grand Challenge, and now experimented with by Google and others.

The next big step in safer cars is going to be making them drive themselves.

Airplanes, and especially helicopters, need this approach too.

Maybe once that technology is mature we can get a flying car.

CowboyNeal writes "Controversial patent-holding company Intellectual Ventures has been covered on Slashdot before, but a recent CNET article takes a look inside the company, at how they work, and what they have planned for the future. Read below to find out if they are merely a patent-troll, or if their shrewd tactics belie a more noble master plan?"

Intellectual Ventures was first founded in 2000, and since then has acquired an amazing portfolio of patents and "intellectual assets." Even the most conservative of estimates, indicate over 30,000 purchased patents and applications, and over 2000 inventions developed in-house. It's a rather staggering amount of intellectual property for a company that itself does not produce any products.

In the process of collecting the aforementioned patents and inventions, Intellectual Ventures has made itself into a grim spectre haunting the tech industry, garnering it's share of bad press over the years, including a segment on This American Life on NPR, which goes so far as to compare Intellectual Ventures to the mafia, engaging in an IP protection racket. CNET describes the company as having a split personality, in which one part resembles a think tank, where people both create and refine new ideas to solve problems large and small, another part is an "altruistic do-gooder," while the final part is the patent-troll side they've been showing us previously.

During the tour of the company, devices are shown off that include everything from a laser-wielding bug zapper to a microscope for early malaria detection. Intellectual Ventures purports to represent the inventors behind these devices and more, while preparing to spin them off into new companies. One such earlier device, a new nuclear reactor, made headlines again recently as Bill Gates has begun investing in it. A second company has also launched recently. Kymeta, which is also funded in part by Gates, aims to improve wireless broadband access using better satellite connections.

While the inventions that are showcased have a serious cool factor about them, there's still the underlying notion that the invention side of the business is funded by their patent-trolling activities. While no one can really fault advances in fighting malaria or polio, for every new idea they have come up with, there are hundreds of shell companies, such as the infamous Lodsys, who do little but stifle innovation in the industry.

Because Intellectual Ventures and its shell companies have no actual products of their own, they're well-suited to the rigors of patent litigation. Most smaller companies aren't designed or prepared for a patent war. When a company is sued for violating one of Intellectual Ventures' patents, that company now has to divert resources away from making its products, and focus on defending its right to make those products. Just the discovery phase of a lawsuit can bring normal work to a halt, or at the least greatly impede forward progress. Since a company like Intellectual Ventures or one of its shell corporations, is prepared for the suit from the beginning, and has nothing to halt production on, they're much better poised to handle the ongoing work of a court case, and begin the case with a distinct advantage.

So after twelve years, 30,000 pieces of various forms of intellectual property, 1300 patent-holding shell corporations, and a network of 3000 inventors, only two companies have been spun off from Intellectual Ventures. That seems like a rather high price to pay, and a recent Forbes story seems to agree. That doesn't even take into account the damage that has been to industry as a result of the numerous patent cases.

In a recent response to company criticism, Intellectual Ventures has been advertising for a newly-created position, the vice president of Global Good. It seems to me that before hiring another suit, they could easily pull from their pool of around 3000 inventors, and have a few dozen or so just say what their potential products are, and how Intellectual Ventures has helped them on the road to market. This wouldn't exonerate Intellectual Ventures from their patent trolling by any means, but it would be a first step in the right direction. CNET wasn't able to talk to any inventors at length during their tour. Most of the images of inside Intellectual Ventures are of empty rooms, where employees either weren't currently working, or were required to be removed entirely. This renders it awfully hard to put a human face on any possible good that may be going on inside Intellectual Ventures. Reading through past Intellectual Ventures press releases doesn't produce any either. What it does provide, however, is a long list of companies that have been forced to partner with or license rights from Intellectual Ventures. Despite any good intentions they may assert, their track record speaks otherwise. Even if you apply the adage that one has to break a few eggs to make an omelet, they've broken tens of thousands of eggs, and made only a few omelets.

CowboyNeal writes "Controversial patent-holding company Intellectual Ventures has been covered on Slashdot before, but a recent CNET article takes a look inside the company, at how they work, and what they have planned for the future. Read below to find out if they are merely a patent-troll, or if their shrewd tactics belie a more noble master plan?"

Intellectual Ventures was first founded in 2000, and since then has acquired an amazing portfolio of patents and "intellectual assets." Even the most conservative of estimates, indicate over 30,000 purchased patents and applications, and over 2000 inventions developed in-house. It's a rather staggering amount of intellectual property for a company that itself does not produce any products.

In the process of collecting the aforementioned patents and inventions, Intellectual Ventures has made itself into a grim spectre haunting the tech industry, garnering it's share of bad press over the years, including a segment on This American Life on NPR, which goes so far as to compare Intellectual Ventures to the mafia, engaging in an IP protection racket. CNET describes the company as having a split personality, in which one part resembles a think tank, where people both create and refine new ideas to solve problems large and small, another part is an "altruistic do-gooder," while the final part is the patent-troll side they've been showing us previously.

During the tour of the company, devices are shown off that include everything from a laser-wielding bug zapper to a microscope for early malaria detection. Intellectual Ventures purports to represent the inventors behind these devices and more, while preparing to spin them off into new companies. One such earlier device, a new nuclear reactor, made headlines again recently as Bill Gates has begun investing in it. A second company has also launched recently. Kymeta, which is also funded in part by Gates, aims to improve wireless broadband access using better satellite connections.

While the inventions that are showcased have a serious cool factor about them, there's still the underlying notion that the invention side of the business is funded by their patent-trolling activities. While no one can really fault advances in fighting malaria or polio, for every new idea they have come up with, there are hundreds of shell companies, such as the infamous Lodsys, who do little but stifle innovation in the industry.

Because Intellectual Ventures and its shell companies have no actual products of their own, they're well-suited to the rigors of patent litigation. Most smaller companies aren't designed or prepared for a patent war. When a company is sued for violating one of Intellectual Ventures' patents, that company now has to divert resources away from making its products, and focus on defending its right to make those products. Just the discovery phase of a lawsuit can bring normal work to a halt, or at the least greatly impede forward progress. Since a company like Intellectual Ventures or one of its shell corporations, is prepared for the suit from the beginning, and has nothing to halt production on, they're much better poised to handle the ongoing work of a court case, and begin the case with a distinct advantage.

So after twelve years, 30,000 pieces of various forms of intellectual property, 1300 patent-holding shell corporations, and a network of 3000 inventors, only two companies have been spun off from Intellectual Ventures. That seems like a rather high price to pay, and a recent Forbes story seems to agree. That doesn't even take into account the damage that has been to industry as a result of the numerous patent cases.

In a recent response to company criticism, Intellectual Ventures has been advertising for a newly-created position, the vice president of Global Good. It seems to me that before hiring another suit, they could easily pull from their pool of around 3000 inventors, and have a few dozen or so just say what their potential products are, and how Intellectual Ventures has helped them on the road to market. This wouldn't exonerate Intellectual Ventures from their patent trolling by any means, but it would be a first step in the right direction. CNET wasn't able to talk to any inventors at length during their tour. Most of the images of inside Intellectual Ventures are of empty rooms, where employees either weren't currently working, or were required to be removed entirely. This renders it awfully hard to put a human face on any possible good that may be going on inside Intellectual Ventures. Reading through past Intellectual Ventures press releases doesn't produce any either. What it does provide, however, is a long list of companies that have been forced to partner with or license rights from Intellectual Ventures. Despite any good intentions they may assert, their track record speaks otherwise. Even if you apply the adage that one has to break a few eggs to make an omelet, they've broken tens of thousands of eggs, and made only a few omelets.

CowboyNeal writes "Controversial patent-holding company Intellectual Ventures has been covered on Slashdot before, but a recent CNET article takes a look inside the company, at how they work, and what they have planned for the future. Read below to find out if they are merely a patent-troll, or if their shrewd tactics belie a more noble master plan?"

Intellectual Ventures was first founded in 2000, and since then has acquired an amazing portfolio of patents and "intellectual assets." Even the most conservative of estimates, indicate over 30,000 purchased patents and applications, and over 2000 inventions developed in-house. It's a rather staggering amount of intellectual property for a company that itself does not produce any products.

In the process of collecting the aforementioned patents and inventions, Intellectual Ventures has made itself into a grim spectre haunting the tech industry, garnering it's share of bad press over the years, including a segment on This American Life on NPR, which goes so far as to compare Intellectual Ventures to the mafia, engaging in an IP protection racket. CNET describes the company as having a split personality, in which one part resembles a think tank, where people both create and refine new ideas to solve problems large and small, another part is an "altruistic do-gooder," while the final part is the patent-troll side they've been showing us previously.

During the tour of the company, devices are shown off that include everything from a laser-wielding bug zapper to a microscope for early malaria detection. Intellectual Ventures purports to represent the inventors behind these devices and more, while preparing to spin them off into new companies. One such earlier device, a new nuclear reactor, made headlines again recently as Bill Gates has begun investing in it. A second company has also launched recently. Kymeta, which is also funded in part by Gates, aims to improve wireless broadband access using better satellite connections.

While the inventions that are showcased have a serious cool factor about them, there's still the underlying notion that the invention side of the business is funded by their patent-trolling activities. While no one can really fault advances in fighting malaria or polio, for every new idea they have come up with, there are hundreds of shell companies, such as the infamous Lodsys, who do little but stifle innovation in the industry.

Because Intellectual Ventures and its shell companies have no actual products of their own, they're well-suited to the rigors of patent litigation. Most smaller companies aren't designed or prepared for a patent war. When a company is sued for violating one of Intellectual Ventures' patents, that company now has to divert resources away from making its products, and focus on defending its right to make those products. Just the discovery phase of a lawsuit can bring normal work to a halt, or at the least greatly impede forward progress. Since a company like Intellectual Ventures or one of its shell corporations, is prepared for the suit from the beginning, and has nothing to halt production on, they're much better poised to handle the ongoing work of a court case, and begin the case with a distinct advantage.

So after twelve years, 30,000 pieces of various forms of intellectual property, 1300 patent-holding shell corporations, and a network of 3000 inventors, only two companies have been spun off from Intellectual Ventures. That seems like a rather high price to pay, and a recent Forbes story seems to agree. That doesn't even take into account the damage that has been to industry as a result of the numerous patent cases.

In a recent response to company criticism, Intellectual Ventures has been advertising for a newly-created position, the vice president of Global Good. It seems to me that before hiring another suit, they could easily pull from their pool of around 3000 inventors, and have a few dozen or so just say what their potential products are, and how Intellectual Ventures has helped them on the road to market. This wouldn't exonerate Intellectual Ventures from their patent trolling by any means, but it would be a first step in the right direction. CNET wasn't able to talk to any inventors at length during their tour. Most of the images of inside Intellectual Ventures are of empty rooms, where employees either weren't currently working, or were required to be removed entirely. This renders it awfully hard to put a human face on any possible good that may be going on inside Intellectual Ventures. Reading through past Intellectual Ventures press releases doesn't produce any either. What it does provide, however, is a long list of companies that have been forced to partner with or license rights from Intellectual Ventures. Despite any good intentions they may assert, their track record speaks otherwise. Even if you apply the adage that one has to break a few eggs to make an omelet, they've broken tens of thousands of eggs, and made only a few omelets.

fermion writes "This American Life is running a story this week on Intellectual Ventures, a firm some consider the leader of the patent trolls. The story delves into the origins of the term patent troll and the rise of the patent troll industry. Much time is spent presenting Intellectual Ventures both as a patent troll firm and a legitimate business that allows helpless inventors to monetize patents. It is stipulated that Intellectual Ventures does not in fact sue anyone. It is also alleged that Intellectual Ventures creates many shell companies, presumably to hide such activity. Intellectual Ventures is compared to a Mafia protection racket that may never actually burn down a business that does not pay the dues, but does encourage such burning to occur."

prunedude tips this quote from a post at Freakonomics about Japan's nuclear crisis: "The folks over at IV Insights, the blog associated with Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, point out that it was the complete loss of power that disabled the cooling systems protecting the plant's reactors. Which raises the question: Is there nuclear technology that could withstand such a catastrophe? Possibly. TerraPower, an Intellectual Ventures spin-off that also boasts Bill Gates as an investor, is working on a new reactor design called a traveling wave reactor that uses fast reactor technology, rather than the light water technology used at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The two biggest advantages of the fast reactor design is that it requires no spent fuel pools and uses cooling systems that require no power to function, meaning the loss of power from the tsunami might not have crippled a fast reactor plant so severely."

Hugh Pickens writes "TerraPower, an energy start-up backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, is in discussions with Toshiba Corp. to develop a small-scale nuclear reactor that would represent a long-term bet to make nuclear power safer and cheaper. Toshiba confirmed it is in preliminary discussions with TerraPower, a unit of Intellectual Ventures, a patent-holding concern partially funded by Gates. Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori says the two sides are talking about how they could collaborate on nuclear technology, although discussions are still in early stages and that nothing has been decided on investment or development. TerraPower has publicly said its Traveling Wave Reactor could run for decades on depleted uranium without refueling (PDF) or removing spent fuel from the device. The reactor, the company has said, could be safer, cheaper and more socially acceptable than today's reactors. Gates's recent focus on nuclear power has been fueled by an interest in developing new power systems for developing countries where he says that new energy solutions are needed to combat climate change. Terrapower faces a lengthy, multi-year process to get its "traveling wave" reactor concept reviewed by regulators but if TerraPower succeeds in advancing its plans, it could provide an alternative blueprint for the nuclear industry at a time when new reactors may be coming online."

theodp writes "He once controlled the world's PCs. Now Bill Gates has set his sights on controlling the world's weather. And patenting it. On Thursday, the USPTO revealed that Gates and ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold have filed five patent applications that propose using large fleets of vessels to suppress hurricanes through various methods of mixing warm water from the surface of the ocean with colder water at greater depths. The idea is to decrease the surface temperature, reducing or eliminating the heat-driven condensation that fuels the giant storms. Hey, a guy can only play so much golf in retirement."

elwinc writes "There's a great New Yorker story about Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures company, whose business model is to nurture ideas, write patents, and sell them. Apparently they're filing about 500 patents a year including a passive thorium reactor which consumes waste from conventional reactors. On the lighter side, you can read how Nathan has achieved 'dominant T. rex market share.'" Though we've discussed Myhrvold and his company in the past, the New Yorker focuses more on how incredible it is to have a group of very intelligent people sitting around a table developing ideas.

theodp writes "Microsoft alum Nathan Myhrvold so strongly believes intellectual property is the next software that he's studying for the patent bar exam. His company, Intellectual Ventures, doesn't actually make anything - only patent attorneys roam the hallways. Myhrvold isn't the only true believer. Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Apple, Google, and eBay have contributed to a $350M bankroll which the firm is using to buy up existing patents that can be rented to companies who want to produce real products."