An inside look at Intellectual Ventures

A reader writes"Nathan Myhrvold has started a multi-hundred million dollar firm to develop new inventions and patent them. It has remained a very secretive organization, despite recruiting reclusive geniuses and buying up thousands of patents from other companies. Now Business Week has the scoop: "As his cash-rich firm snaps up thousands of patents, fears emerge that it will become a leader in litigation - not innovation..."

Comments

A vile trade

[andrewman327]

I really take issue with companies whose business models center around taking others to court. This type of business is an insult to the inventors who did not get proper credit for their discoveries. From GMail to Amazon, frivilous suits alleging prior art hurt the bottom lines of legitimate companies that are not out to steal from anyone.

I hope that this venture exercises some restraint in its persuits.

Re: A vile trade

[Black Parrot]

> I really take issue with companies whose business models center around taking others to court. [...] I hope that this venture exercises some restraint in its persuits.

Man is an economic animal, and will harvest any niche the law will allow.

I'm tempted to say we should fix the law rather than relying on restraint, but the most recent patent legislation the US Congress was considering looked like it was going to 'fix' the problem by letting the big guys walk all over the little guys.

Re:A vile trade

[dnoyeb]

I havent seen too many frivilous suits alleging prior art. Seem to be a lot alleging patent infringement though.

Re:A vile trade

[TopShelf]

I really take issue with companies whose business models center around taking others to court.

If you RTFA, that's not the business model. It's something they may have to do when patents of theirs (they apply for their own patents as well as buy some up) get infringed and the other party won't agree to license it, but that's no different than any other firm protecting its assets.

The article summary plays up the litigation angle out of all proportion. Getting a variety of top minds to focus on how to make major technological advances is a worthy enterprise.

Re: A vile trade

[Znork]

In my opinion, the law as it is is unfixable. The very structure of monopoly rights is inherently unbalanced and is an aberration in a free market, one whose costs are huge but unaccounted for, while the benefits in terms of innovation and rewards to actual inventors are dubious.

Redesign the system as stipend rights instead, conferring, in exchange for disclosure, the right to an actual monetary payout upon a certain level of use of the invention in question. That way the system is automatically balanced; with a standard government budget the costs are controllable (government spending tendencies aside), if too many 'patent stipends' are granted, the rewards for each shrink so all involved parties have an interest in only valid ones being granted. Companies would not need fear litigation; they could browse the patent databases as they please and just note which ones they include, combine and mix and match, etc. The litigation burden would go down; the inventor would not need to sue anyone for using their invention; the more the better, as their payout would increase.

Financing such a system isnt really that hard, once you accept that the current system isnt as 'free' as it seems, but is actually more or less equivalent to a taxation on new technology (which is _not_ a good thing, as it slows adoption rates even more). A flat 'innovation VAT' rate would be a large improvement, or even better, rates geared towards phasing out undesireable old technology. But above all, it should be accounted for, with measurable economic impact, not the current 'more or less years that does something or the other that we cant really tell to innovation and costs but you dont see it as it's in the price of goods and insurances'.

Re:A vile trade

[Anonymous Coward]

I just patented the "making a stupid retort" ability on Slashdot. Since you did so without paying me licensing fees, you now owe me a bajillion dollars.

No - make business do something with their technology/patents, other than sitting on them. Give them 3 years, with a couple of 1 year extensions possible, to produce a product, or get people to license it, or the patent becomes part of the public domain...

Re:A vile trade

[burnin1965]

I really take issue with companies whose business models center around taking others to court.

If you RTFA, that's not the business model. It's something they may have to do when patents of theirs (they apply for their own patents as well as buy some up) get infringed and the other party won't agree to license it, but that's no different than any other firm protecting its assets.

If YOU RTFA, that is the business model.

From TFA...

Twenty years ago, he notes, software makers--some of whom now flout patents--faced the same predicament with trying to get the market to respect copyrights. Even big corporations, he says, would buy a single copy of a spreadsheet program and copy it. That has largely changed, through education, changes in the law, and some vigorous enforcement. Myhrvold is aware he may have to do some enforcement of his own. A moment after calling litigation "disastrous," he adds: "Sometimes disaster happens, and you have to do it."

If you RTFA you would have noticed that the business model of IV is to think up lots of ideas to patent but not actually create anything. They intend to go after those who actually do the creating and attempt to extort capital out of them.

While IV calls their little meeting of the minds Invention Sessions they are actually idea sessions. There is no follow up after the idea session to do all the research and development necessary to make an actual invention out of the ideas that are brain stormed. If patent rules were properly followed ideas would not be patented, you have to go from idea to invention before you have something that is patentable. Unfortunately corporate lawyers have hounded the USPTO enough to make idea patents the norm, which explains the existence of these patent trolls.

Re: A vile trade

[Anonymous Coward]

Man is an economic animal

You mean "man is an animal", and hopefully, "man is a moral animal".
What differentiates us from other animals is that we have a society, and we act socially, that is, when we do something, we consider the social consequences.

Companies however, have no morals and no conscience. We made a mistake when we granted companies the same rights as people. We should take that right away and make companies socially responsible. Companies are allowed to exist because they serve society as wel as their owners. When they no longer serve society, we should shut them down.

Re:A vile trade

[daterabytez]

Your comment is true, but your examples are misleading. The system sucks, but "it is all we have", so to speak. You don't change the laws by breaking or ignoring them. Companies like Amazon.com and Google must aggressivly seek patents, lest they open themselves up to lawsuits by companies who really ARE building their business model around lawsuits. Amazon spends millions a year, and employs thousands of engineers developing their software. Google is no different. Top-ranking Amazon officials have constantly, publicly stated that they want to reform patent law. Go to your favorite small time online retailer... thinkgeek, sheetmusicplus.com, or pretty much anyone - and you'll see more patent infringments than you can count. Amazon seeking a patent on one-click isn't ludicrous - it is ludicrous that it was GRANTED, meaning if some other company had done the same, they could have sued Amazon for millions. Stop painting companies as the bad guy without knowing what you are talking about. Actions speak louder than words, and when was the last time Google, Amazon, etc, agressivly and unprovoked, sued anyone?

Re: A vile trade

[stonecypher]

The very structure of monopoly rights is inherently unbalanced and is an aberration in a free market, one whose costs are huge but unaccounted for, while the benefits in terms of innovation and rewards to actual inventors are dubious.

That's why the monopoly is temporary. As far as the rewards to inventors being dubious, hardly: none of my several businesses would have been possible if I had to fear some giant corporation swooping in and stealing my lunch the second I was done making it.

Redesign the system as stipend rights instead, conferring, in exchange for disclosure, the right to an actual monetary payout upon a certain level of use of the invention in question.

Er. That's exactly what the current system does. The only time it goes to court is when some third party attempts to use your patent without rights. That you only ever see them going to court is a reflection of interest: the normal pay-a-fee-then-use process is fairly boring, and as such doesn't get reported upon.

Of course, under our current system we have something better: required disclosure. That means that everyone knows how it's done, and once the temporary protection is over, everyone can use it. It's much closer to the FOSS ideal than the replacement you describe, with a 20-year admission to economics to make the hard work of development and the harder work of protection feasable for the people taking the risk.

There is an alternate system for if you want to not disclose, called "Trade Secrets," which more closely mimics what you're suggesting; however, as it's largely useless, it's very rarely used except in situations like food and perfume formulas.

You taxation ideas are about 150 years behind the times. Please read up on economics before purporting to be able to replace them; valuing all objects equally means that the valueless ones still don't get bought, and the valuable ones aren't developed since the rewards wouldn't be compensatory. All your suggestions would do was prevent lots of inventions from happening in the first place.

There's a very good reason that in the three years after this system was adopted, the rate of US technical development increased by almost 400%. Perhaps you should wait until you've tried to structure a business before complaining about business structure rules?

Re: A vile trade

[Znork]

"That's exactly what the current system does."

Er. No. The current system awards a monopoly; you need to be able to exploit the monopoly to obtain monetary rewards.

"The only time it goes to court is when some third party attempts to use your patent without rights."

And you know it, and you have the resources to pursue it, etc.

"Please read up on economics"

I'd suggest you do the same. Take good care to study the workings of free market competition, starting off with Adam Smith, then look over such concepts as monopoly pricing, deadweight loss, etc. Then take more than a cursory look at the history of patents.

"Perhaps you should wait until you've tried to structure a business"

Perhaps you should try to consider IP law from the perspective of what drives innovation and social advantage rather than what structure fits your idea of a business model.

How about other countries?

[Poromenos1]

There's one thing I don't understand, patents are a US thing. What if a company develops elsewhere something patented in the US, is that legal? Or will they not be able to market it in the US?

Re:How about other countries?

[Mindragon]

Patents and Copyrights are a right to sue over a particular piece of technology or art. You can "invent" the idea on the moon, file a US patent or copyright and then sue anyone (or everyone in the case of the RIAA/MPAA). All a patent or copyright is a "supposedly" clever piece of legalease that allows "LawYERS" the right and process to sue someone else.

An invention is an idea to make everyone's lives easier.

A patent or copyright is an idea to make everyone suffer for it.
 

Re:How about other countries?

[Ant P.]

Outside the US's control US law doesn't apply. IIRC OpenBSD is based in Canada for similar reasons, and they just get people to "import" it.

Re:How about other countries?

[jkabbe]

Simply put, a patent in the US gives the owner the right to prevent others from making, using, or selling the patented invention in the US. This is generally accomplished through litigation (although threats of litigation sometimes suffice :). A US patent has no effect outside the US.

Re:How about other countries?

[Slightly Askew]

Despite what others may tell you, US patent laws are applicable outside of the United States...indirectly. It has nothing to do with lawsuits or payoffs, though. It has to do with US Trade Policy. It is the policy of the US that we require our trade partners to respect the patents of US companies. Now, granted, trade policy is as full of holes as shotgunned swiss cheese, but foreign countries do have to abide by US patent laws if, for no other reason, it is only to give them one more bargaining chip on the table when diplomats discuss new policy.

Re:How about other countries?

[IAmTheDave]

a patent in the US gives the owner

Ya know, this is probably the biggest problem with our patent system - assignability. A patent should not be assignable. The right to license, maybe... But "buying up" thousands of patents is not any effort to "protect" valuable IP assessts that assist said purchaser against infringement of an invention they had anything to do with.

Patents are supposed to protect theft of an idea from those that toil away at a process to invent a new... thing.

Assignability of patents (other than in death to family, lets say) means assignability of a monopoly meant strictly for the inventor, not the purchaser of the IP rights.

Re:How about other countries?

[larytet]

there are trade agreements between countries. you buy a patent in the US you get protection in many

Re:How about other countries?

[oliderid]

I don't agree.

In 1999 the last time I had to deal with patents. You had to buy patents for every single country where you plan to make business. An extremely expensive operation. Most young firms prefer to concentrate their capital on key markets such as the US, Japan and the European Union. I knew firms which proposed a world package for patents. But it doesn't change the fact that legally you have to buy patents for each market.

see: http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=26 Today, all patents in the world are national documents granted under national rules and procedures. The PCT allows patentees to shortcut some of that process, if they wish to seek protection internationally, by allowing for preliminary examination of the application. (An invention must fulfill three criteria to be patentable: novelty, inventive step/non-obviousness and utility/industrial application. These are tested against a review of already existing inventions.) If the application holds up as valid, the inventor proceeds with national filing. The countries in which the application is filed may evaluate the patent independently or accept the findings of WIPO's examiners -- it's up to them.

US or not the patent is useless outside the national border.

Re:How about other countries?

[querk44]

That's not entirely true, a patent also gives the owner the right to prevent others from importing the patented invention, as the parent was questioning, so it has some effect outside the US in that regard.

Re:How about other countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inside US control US and international law doesn't always apply; see Guantanamo.

Re:How about other countries?

[jkabbe]

a patent also gives the owner the right to prevent others from importing the patented invention

Yes, I know - but the substantive rights are what I described. I'd have to do some research on this (which, unfortunately, I do not have time for) - but I wonder if it is possible to stop someone from importing a patented article if the article is not then used or sold in the US. What if I want to import patented item and just stack them up to see how many I could get, but I never actually used or sold them? I wonder if such a case has ever even arisen. For instance, the Creative suit against Apple at the ITC is happening because Apple is selling the ipods. If Apple simply left the ipods in boxes, I doubt Creative would have been able to sue.

Re:How about other countries?

[mwvdlee]

Two small mistakes.

1. Patents exist in order to motivate people to invent stuff. The exclusive rights gained by claiming a patent is the mechanism by which this goal is reached, the incentive boiling down, through the time-limited monopoly, to "money". It may seem a small distinction but it is an essential one; patents are about financially motivating inventors, not about protecting their ideas.

2. As such, an inventor should be free to reek that financial benefit in whichever way (s)he can. If one privately invents a new type of rocket fuel, chances are very small the inventor can ever exploit it themselves. Or perhaps they just don't want to deal with the administrative business of handing out licenses. There are valid reasons to allow an inventor to sell off his/her patents to others. Disallowing one to sell patents would seriously limit the ability of inventors to exploit their ideas.

It could be debated whether the current patent system does what it is supposed to do; a 20-year patent protection is arguably contradictive to the intended goal of motivating inventors to develop new things. Perhaps prolonged posession of patents, without the intent to develop products utilizing it, should be limited. I.e. either release a product using the patent within one year, or the patent will become public domain.

Re:How about other countries?

[stonecypher]

Whoever marked this informative needs to be meta-moderated into the ground.

Re:How about other countries?

[stonecypher]

Er, they've been directly applicable in more than 90% of the world since the 1993 Berne Conventions. Any country in the UN.

One story about Nathan Myrvold

[pablomarx]

Andy Hertzfeld strived to open Magic Cap at the time of the GMGC bankruptcy. If I remember Andy's explanation correctly, Nathan Myrvold, formerly of Microsoft, used the bankruptcy process to capture the IP after Andy Hertzfeld working with Andy Rubin had won two previous decisions to get the Magic Cap IP. Nathan mostly wanted the Telescript agent patents for his dead startup patent collection, though.
Afterwards, Andy H. continued to work with Nathan to pry the Magic Cap IP loose, since Nathan allegedly didn't care that much. But Nathan kept putting more and more restrictions on Magic Cap's use to the point that few would have been able to use the Magic Cap technology for anything practical or interesting even if it was open source. So Andy finally stopped trying.
The bottom line is that even though no one is using Magic Cap, we can't make it available as open source. And thus, and incredible amount of creativity, investment and hard work is effectively lost to the world (except for what people remember in their heads).

Old Idea

[should_be_linear]

See them in court if they try to get around my patent 3404987: "Method of starting a multi-hundred million dollar firms for establishing new inventions and patenting them".

Re:Old Idea

[VikingThunder]

Oh they can. They will simply become a billion dollar firm.

Re:Old Idea

[Jerry Coffin]

See them in court if they try to get around my patent 3404987:

I know this was meant to be funny, but it brings out a frequently ignored point. The real patent number 3404987 expired in 1985. What it covered (a food preservative) was the exclusive property of Procter and Gamble for a while, but it's now in the public domain, so anybody can use it. Furthermore, the patent gives anybody who cares directions about exactly what it is, how to make it, and how to use it.

The point is that patents expire, and when they do, whatever they covered becomes public domain, guaranteed to be usable by anybody. Furthermore, they often disclose more than they actually covered -- and whatever they disclose is public domain as well.

For quite a while, the patent office didn't accept applications for patents on software at all. That meant (among other things) that when they did start to accept such patents, it was hard to see the benefit because no such patent was going to expire for a long time, and it often looked like they'd all be obsolete long before they expired. That's clearly not the case. There are now quite a few expired patents on truly useful things. Obvious examples include LZW compression and RSA encryption.

Right now we're seeing an explosion in the number of patents on what we currently consider high-tech inventions. These, however, are starting to expire. Somewhere on the order of 1000 patents expire every week -- and that number is rising. In a few years, we can expect to see a couple of thousand inventions come into the public domain every week -- and they'll all include directions about how to build them, put them to use, etc. Without the patent system, or something very similar to it, we could not expect such a thing to happen.

Re:Old Idea

[FusionDragon2099]

And then the big companies will lobby to have patents extended, just like copyrights.

Re:Old Idea

[Jerf]

You forgot ON THE INTERNET.

Patent application denied. Please resubmit. Do not forget your "revision review" fee.

Re:Old Idea

[Watson Ladd]

No, because an extension hurts everyone equally. If my patents get extended, so do other peoples. Copyrights don't hurt big companies, so that is why they want to get them extended all the time.

Re:Old Idea

[orasio]

Right now we're seeing an explosion in the number of patents on what we currently consider high-tech inventions. These, however, are starting to expire. Somewhere on the order of 1000 patents expire every week -- and that number is rising. In a few years, we can expect to see a couple of thousand inventions come into the public domain every week -- and they'll all include directions about how to build them, put them to use, etc. Without the patent system, or something very similar to it, we could not expect such a thing to happen.

duh!
HTTP specs didn't come from the patent office. CVS didn't, either. Autoconf, and the autoconf HOWTO were not the produt of the great petenting inventors.
Newtonian physics don't come from patents, and neither do mathematics. The greek didn't have patents, either.

It's an insult to humanity to say that patents are the only way people can share their ideas to improve their surroundings. That's nonsense. Patents were a somewhat good solution to a problem that doesn't exist anymore.
Right now, innovation is hindered, rather than prepeled, by patents, because at the current rate, it can only be stopped by legal ways such as patents. There is enough incentive to develop all kinds of stuff, even if you don't get a monopoly on production.

Re:Old Idea

[Jerry Coffin]

And then the big companies will lobby to have patents extended, just like copyrights.

The first US patent law was passed in 1790, and gave a term of 14 years with the possibility of a 7 year extension. In 1836, the possibility of an extension was removed, and the original term was extended to 17 years. It stayed at 17 years until 1995.

Up to that point, the term of a patent was measured from the time the patent was granted. In 1995, the law was changed so the term of a patent is measured from the time the patent is filed instead. Since it typically takes around 3 years for a patent to be granted, they changed the coverage to be 20 years from when the patent is filed. This change gets rid of a few abuses some people used to keep patents in the system for years (decades, in some cases) to extend their coverage far beyond what was ever really intended.

This gives some minimal extension to a few patents that are granted relatively quickly. OTOH, it shortens the term of patents that take longer to be granted. There's also a special provision for drug patents to have their coverage extended in case the patent would be expired (or nearly so) before the FDA approved its sale.

All in all, there's been little overall change. Some patents granted under the current law will probably get a couple of years more than they would have under the 1790 law, but there are almost certainly other patents that get less. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that on average, patents now expire a bit sooner than they did at that time.

Re:Old Idea

[Jerry Coffin]

It's an insult to humanity to say that patents are the only way people can share their ideas to improve their surroundings.

I've never heard anybody say they're the only way. Quite a few different methods have been tried, however, and patents do appear to be one of the most effective. If, however, you look at the systems that were in place before patents came into use, they were mostly aimed at confining knowledge, not sharing it. There's pretty solid historical evidence that under the old guild system, people were sometimes killed for having revealed the guild's secrets. In fact, engineering books today are chock full of knowledge that was once carefully guarded from public disclosure.

Right now, innovation is hindered, rather than prepeled, by patents, because at the current rate, it can only be stopped by legal ways such as patents. There is enough incentive to develop all kinds of stuff, even if you don't get a monopoly on production.

There would undoubtedly be some innovation without a patent system. Personally, however, I'm reasonably convinced that there wouldn't be nearly as much. Much of this would be due to inventions not being published.

As far as HTTP and autoconf go: neither one would probably qualify for a patent in the first place. To patent something, you need to invent something. Offhand, I can't think of much about either one that looks truly inventive. It's hard to imagine anybody attempting to put something as innovative as public key encryption into the same bin with something as mundane as HTTP or autoconf.

Re:Old Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

In a few years, we can expect to see a couple of thousand inventions come into the public domain every week -- and they'll all include directions about how to build them, put them to use, etc.

And most of them will involve such amazing technical innovations as Amazon's one-click shopping, i.e. they will be completely fucking obvious to everyone but the patent examiner who granted them.

Re:Old Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I just looked up the history of the RSA algorithm: it was developed by computer science researchers at MIT, and patented six years later by MIT. Certainly not a shining example of innovation brought about by the patent system. As far as I know, developing new quality cryptosystems is almost entirely done by academia and security agencies, neither of which would stop without patents. Did you have some particular case in mind that would prove otherwise?

Re:Old Idea

[pimpimpim]

Yeah, thank the world for the patent system!!! I am already so excited for the moment microsoft's 'IsNot' patent (2005) will expire, I'll be eager to use the directions mentioned in it to create my own free program! I guess it's only 19 years still, but I can wait.

Or wasn't there this patent which says I can open/buy stuff by clicking one, two (2004), three times with a mouse, or whatever. Using a progress bar in an application (1990). Really, in one or two decades will see a big leap forward in computer technology, all thanks to the patent system! But what are we supposed to do in the meantime, without the rights to use all these technologies? Back to our terminals, of which the patents from 86 are expiring now?

Re:Old Idea

[Jerry Coffin]

You seem to have missed the point. Yes, there would be some innovation without a patent system -- RSA might have been developed if there were no patents, but it might well have taken many more years before it happened. And yes, that's a case in point. A quick review of public key cryptography might reveal why I think that.

PK in general was originally invented by one of the British spy agencies (CESG, if memory serves). They invented analogs to both Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and to RSA encryption. They didn't see it as particularly useful for their work, so they didn't do much with it, but they kept the work secret, so nobody else did anything with it either. Nothing happened at all.

Then (years later), Diffie and Hellman worked out their key exchange protocol. They patented and published it. Almost immediately, the entire field nearly exploded -- half a dozen more forms of public key cryptography were invented (and half of them broken, of course). Among those was RSA -- but if D-H hadn't patented and published theirs first, I doubt RSA would have been invented, at least when and how it was. Somebody else might have eventually come up with the same thing -- or, if nothing else, the earlier British work might have come to public notice and somebody would have recognized its usefulness.

OTOH, that really is an "eventually" kind of thing. Admittedly, it's impossible to say what would have happened under different circumstances; it's possible that even without a patent system, Diffie and Hellman would have published their work. It's possible that without Diffie and Hellman's prior work, Rivest, Shamir and Adelman would have gotten together and developed RSA anyway -- but I doubt it. My own guess is that if there wasn't a patent system, "ecommerce" would only be a typo, not a business model.

Great! Now R&D will be outsourced to India/Chi

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be no R&D or manufacturing business in the US shortly.
Only lawyer and lobbying firms.

The wonderful US legal system

[MosesJones]

As his cash-rich firm snaps up thousands of patents, fears emerge that it will become a leader in litigation - not innovation...

If you have a lot of money right now and are looking for the next easy buck you don't get much better than IP ownership at the moment. You know that Congress, Senate and the President are all gunning for greater IP protection and longevity, and you know that a large and growing proportion of the current patent stock are for either obvious ideas or taking of "real-world" ideas and putting an "e" infront of them.

Its hard to critisise it as a money making venture, but as low-life pond scum go its right up there with being a convicted monopolist.

Re:The wonderful US legal system

[MoonFog]

At least the government appears to be handling the monopoly issue (Not satisfactory perhaps). In this case, they're preparing to more or less protect them..

As with any business venture like this

[agent dero]

Isn't this along the same lines as the fears of Google snatching up all the best and brightest of the Computer Scientists from Apple and Microsoft?

While yes, such a concentration of bright people can really lock down the rest of the industry (although not likely), it's also something completely unique that we should really give a chance.

Inventions help people, yes, as with any business involving intellectual property, there is room for abuse, but there is also room for incredible progress. At how many software firms do you bring in brilliant scientists, and vice versa. Cross-applying technology can really help benefit us as a society.

What's the difference between Apple or Microsoft plunging millions of dollars into R&D and then licensing their technology out to other companies? Isn't this exactly the same?

Wake up people, fear mongering about this company is completely misdirected, they have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, the true fear that should be exposed here is the ability to abuse the intellectual property laws in america, IV has nothing to do with it.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[Anonymous Coward]

as with any business involving intellectual property, there is room for abuse, but there is also room for incredible progress.

Wake me when there's a solid record of more good than evil being done by this "trade."

Re:As with any business venture like this

[Qzukk]

Isn't this exactly the same?

I don't know, is the article really correct about this being a super-secret operation? It's hard to license out your patents when nobody knows you exist and you're not helping people find out about them.

I can see how this is similar to Apple or Microsoft plunging millions of dollars into R&D but I don't see where they are licensing their technology out to other companies.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference between Apple or Microsoft plunging millions of dollars into R&D and then licensing their technology out to other companies? Isn't this exactly the same?

The lack of millions of dollars in R&D. This company is doing two things: 1) it buys up patents or cross licenses them from other companies or 2) just have people brainstorm ideas and patent them. There's no actual invention going on here. Invention requires coming up with an idea and making it work. The making it work part is the most important. What they are doing is screwing over those in the future who will make it work by patenting it now.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[agent dero]

They'd be stupid not to.

While, as the RIAA has shown, a business of litigation can be successful, Microsoft as well as other tech based companies have shown that it's much easier to make insane amounts of profit through licensing of something versus any other method.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[Tim C]

What's the difference between Apple or Microsoft plunging millions of dollars into R&D and then licensing their technology out to other companies? Isn't this exactly the same?

Well, for a start, MS and Apple are likely to implement the inventions themselves, as well as licensing them to others. That's much, much more important than it may seem at first - by implementing them, it quickly becomes obvious that the patent exists. If you patent something and sit on it, then someone else has the same idea, it's a lot less likely that they'll spot the patent, if they believe they're the first to have the idea. That allows for much greater scope for surprise litigation.

Wake up people, fear mongering about this company is completely misdirected, they have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, the true fear that should be exposed here is the ability to abuse the intellectual property laws in america, IV has nothing to do with it.

I agree, up to a point. They do have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, but they also have equal opportunity to do a lot of harm. Until such time as they show their hand one way or the other, you'll have to forgive me for being suspicious of them.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[0xdeadbeef]

Mod points and a contrarian karma whore... *sigh* I hate giving the benefit of doubt.

Your appeal is misdirection. The entire point of the article is that the company is engaging in a pattern that should invite scrutiny. Microsoft and Apple's primary focus is to create products which they sell. They invest in research to give them a competitive advange, to increase the value of their products, and to acquire patents which would lock out smaller competitors. An idea farm such is this exists solely to exploit the patent system, for good or ill, but with the system rigged the way it is now, which would not have happend if powerful interests didn't want it that way, the propensity for ill is far greater than that of good.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[edgedmurasame]

Somehow I see it as a mix of the worst of Stanford elitism multiplied by the magnitude of unethical practices of SCO.
It's not like we've seen precedents of each, given that Google, SCO, and Apple follow in their footsteps. Microsoft just
pulls strings(*cough*uses lobbyists*cough*) at the federal, state, or local levels if they cant buy up or starve someone out.

Wake up people, fear mongering about this company is completely misdirected, they have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, the true fear that should be exposed here is the ability to abuse the intellectual property laws in america, IV has nothing to do with it.

I already woke up, got the coffee and headed out - I know what the enemy has done, and can do with a (greater part) certain regard to ethics/morals.
IV would be auctioned off to creditors already if the profits matched their character. Unfortunately, ethics and morals are inversely related to profit.
Here, it clearly shows that concept in fullest of all known senses.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[burnin1965]

"Isn't this along the same lines as the fears of Google snatching up all the best and brightest of the Computer Scientists from Apple and Microsoft?"

No, its a lottery, if the best and brightest which attent these "Invention Sessions" get their name on a patent, and somebody else comes up with the same idea and actually produces an invention from the idea, IV turns their lawyers against said invention producing company to collect a fee and the bets and brightest who have their name on the patent get a pay day. No job, career, benefits, etc., just a patent lottery ticket.

"While yes, such a concentration of bright people can really lock down the rest of the industry (although not likely), it's also something completely unique that we should really give a chance."

I used to think this was something unique to our time as well, however, a little research into patent litigation will show how patent trolls have been around since at least the early 1800s.

"Inventions help people, yes, as with any business involving intellectual property, there is room for abuse, but there is also room for incredible progress."

Incredible progress is happening now all around us, patent trolls bring nothing of benefit to innovation or invention. They patent their ideas but only wait until someone else comes up with the same or similar idea and actually produces a product from the idea, then they litigate.

"What's the difference between Apple or Microsoft plunging millions of dollars into R&D and then licensing their technology out to other companies? Isn't this exactly the same?"

These patent trolls are not investing the money into R&D, they put all their investment into acquiring the patent paperwork and then litigate against someone who came up with the same or similar idea and invested into the R&D to generate a product.

"Wake up people, fear mongering about this company is completely misdirected, they have a good opportunity to do a lot of good, the true fear that should be exposed here is the ability to abuse the intellectual property laws in america, IV has nothing to do with it."

If IV actually comes up with some ideas that are novel and they broker some deals with companies who are willing to fund the R&D to create a product then great. If what IV does is take their patent portfolio and go after businesses who came up with similar or the same ideas idependant of IV and already funded the R&D to create a marketable product then they are just another patent troll. Based on what is presented in the news article it sounds no different from any other patent troll operation already in existence.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[aevans]

This is equivalent to Apple giving up selling products and inviting IBM and Intel's engineers over for a cushy conference with lots of pampering and then getting them to tell you the problems and ideas they have and then recording everything they say, and then patenting general processes hoping someone will actually invent what was described in the future so you can sue them. As a secondary business, you find the startup that is in the process of a deal with IBM and Intel for their patent for interfacing fiberoptics to silicon, and then buying the patent rights before they realize how valuable it is, only you never would have known, if you hadn't bribed engineers into violating non-disclosure agreements between their employer and the startup

Re:As with any business venture like this

[stonecypher]

An idea farm such is this exists solely to exploit the patent system, for good or ill, but with the system rigged the way it is now, which would not have happend if powerful interests didn't want it that way, the propensity for ill is far greater than that of good.

Whereas I respect your opinion and the quality with which it was stated, I also disagree with it strongly. The question boils down quite nicely into the original question the patent system was formed around: is it worth giving away 20 years of specific-focus technological monopoly to the inventor to provide the economic impetus to release said inventions to the public afterwards?

Given the vast bulk of well documented technology we now have free and legal access to, I believe that the answer is an emphatic "yes." I can go legally manufacturing 386es if I want to, because Intel effectively sold their technologies for protection. In exchange, every company that has a use for that technology can now use it without paying licensure fees.

Yes, there is a good argument that that 20 year margin is a problem, but the issue is effectively this: given the often staggering cost of developing some of these technologies, if we don't let them be temporarily protected from competitors and thieves, how can the inventors justify the expense of invention in the first place?

The only other answer that I see is just keeping it all secret. In my opinion, that's a far more destructive answer, and the market agrees with me (you can tell by inspecting the balance of patent to trade secret.) So, is it worth it to you to let people protect their inventions for N years in order to produce the economic reason to do the work? I suspect the dividing point between us is the answer to this question.

Do you see a different mechanism than patents and trade secrets? If not, do you prefer trade secrets to patents? If not, do you see a way to fund multimillion dollar development projects without the protection of a patent?

If not, what do you suggest as an alternative? I guarantee you my current company, which is generating something new (and, I believe something remarkable,) could not exist, because the second we went public, we'd have competition from the established players in our market which we don't have the war chest to fight back against. To be plain, the only reason my business is possible is because of the protection afforded by our patents.

I would welcome another solution; I don't like this one much, either. But it's the least of the evils I'm able to see.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[stonecypher]

The lack of millions of dollars in R&D. ... or 2) just have people brainstorm ideas and patent them.

Yeah, um. Those brainstorming sessions are the basis of (you guessed it) R&D. That's why it's got a multiple hundred million dollar war-chest. Maybe you should have RTFA; it explained this.

What they are doing is screwing over those in the future who will make it work by patenting it now.

Yeah, that's not actually possible. Patents cover implementations, not ideas. You can't patent something if you can't demonstrate a concrete method to actually make it happen.

Re:As with any business venture like this

[Qzukk]

Well, according to the article its been around for years and we're just now hearing about it.

It also looks like they've been doing licensing ... for $50 million and all your patents. Not exactly startup-friendly, but hey if you're "not infringing" you've got nothing to worry about. Meanwhile their geniuses sit around their skunkworks operation and think up things to patent, which from the descriptions seem to be entirely "process by which problem X is solved", not even the actual solution to the problem.

You know what...

[damburger]

If somebody patented frivolous litigation, these guys would be screwed.

Re:You know what...

[Diss Champ]

Even under the current system, the examiners would recognize the abundant prior art and reject that one. It's the non-lawyer stuff they have trouble with.

Inventor's viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has done a number of patentable ideas and put them into the public domain, I can say I wish I had patented them instead. At least with patents, you have some form of leverage. Ever try to cross license something in the public domain with some corporation's patent? Doesn't work too well. Having your own patents work better.

Oh, and if you think putting something in the public domain prevents some company from patenting it, think again. Sun has a patent application on stuff I put into the public domain 3 years ago. People have suggested I write to the USPTO or something. Wake up! I don't make any money from open source and it's not me who's being impacted. It's the people who would use the open source software who would be affected and *they* need to do something if they want to use it. If the public doesn't want to protect their own rights, then the public be damned.

Re:Inventor's viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent offices should be made liable for costs resulting from voided patents. That's how you stop patents on things that are public domain and that's how you increase patent quality. Effectively patent offices are distributing defective product and should be liable as such.

If checking for prior art is so hard, perhaps we should look at limiting patent protection to pharma.

Re:Inventor's viewpoint

[burnin1965]

Oh, and if you think putting something in the public domain prevents some company from patenting it, think again. Sun has a patent application on stuff I put into the public domain 3 years ago. People have suggested I write to the USPTO or something. Wake up! I don't make any money from open source and it's not me who's being impacted. It's the people who would use the open source software who would be affected and *they* need to do something if they want to use it. If the public doesn't want to protect their own rights, then the public be damned.

Interestingly, it works the same way with copyright. I discovered this while watching the TSCOG vs IBM case where TSCOG registered copyrights for Unix code which Novell later registered as well. It is not up to the patent office or the copyright office to administer the law, that takes place in the courts.

If Sun ever takes anyone to court over those patents your work in the public domain can be used as prior art to shut down any such litigation and likely invalidate Sun's patents. I'm not sure which is more powerful, a patent or prior art, but as long as you didn't lose out on recouping your time invested by not applying for a patent I think you did the right thing. Even if you had filed a patent its likely Sun still would have filed for a similar patent and received it, then you would be out your patent filing fees and Sun would still have their patent on the same or similar idea.

Just as a side note, the USPTO is not supposed to approve patents on ideas, the entire patented software fiasco is a disaster. Software should be covered by copyright, not patents.

Re:Great! Now R&D will be outsourced to India/

[tehgimpness]

What a negative view you have.

I'm sure what you meant to say is: Wow! This boom in tertiary industries will be a great fail safe should we suffer an economic down turn. I for one can't wait to see what it's like living on the street at the first sign of economic instability.

Secretive despite reclusive geniuses?

[mccalli]

It has remained a very secretive organization, despite recruiting reclusive geniuses...

Hmm. Perhaps if it had recruited a few extrovert genuises instead...?

Cheers,
Ian

The only news ....

[Aceticon]

These kinds of companies are hardly new:

Since patents reward being the first to come up with an idea, not being the first to come up with a way of turning that idea into reality, getting a couple of industry-specialists/bright-people in a room and asking them to imagine what kind of things there might exist in the future is a very good way of getting a lot of patents, some of which will become money makers - some companies have already made it their business model to get patents this way, sit on them until somebody does de actual work of truning them into reality, and then squeeze those people for all they can.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that somebody out there is picking ideas from Science Fiction books and patenting them ...

The only news here is that Business Week has picked this up - hopefully this is an indication that there is a growing awareness in business circles of how broken the patent system really is.

EFF version of Intellectual Ventures?

[btarval]

I've always wondered why the EFF doesn't promote a similar thing, but with an Open Source version. That is, helping individual Open Source developers patent new software patents, as long as the software is (say) released under version 3 of the GPL.

Or in otherwords, imagine a Beowulf Cluster (pardon the phrase) of Open Source patent filers. Intellectual Ventures wouldn't stand a chance.

Personally, I'm very opposed to Software Patents, as the EFF is. However, I can really see no other way of effectively changing the system in the near term other than this. Especially if, every so often, one files a suit against a closed-source company, and ends up with hundreds of millions of dollars to fund futher suits (E.g. What happened with RIM and their Blackberries).

I can well imagine that, if you make the big companies scream loudly enough, by hitting them where it hurts, they will end up running to Congress for protection. And, if done right, the only protection is eliminating Software Patents.

Aside from the distastefulness of dealing with Software Patents, I can so no reason why this type of strategy won't work. If anyone can spot what I'm missing from a strategic view, I'd appreciate knowing about it.

Re:EFF version of Intellectual Ventures?

[themusicgod1]

Like this?

Re:EFF version of Intellectual Ventures?

[btarval]

Alas, no. See my other comment above, on this thread.

The problem here is that none of these efforts offer a developer help in Patenting an idea. They are all after the fact. I.e. if you get a Patent, they'll gladly take it from you; but none of them offer you any help at all in getting the Patent in the first place.

My point is that developers can be a rather creative lot, and we should tap into that creativity. The only way to do this is by offering them legal support in actually getting the patent done.

POOR CAMEL...

[3seas]

Sounds like they plan on breaking the system, the camels back, with a mass of sudden weight.

good!

What do they get?

[jkabbe]

If you RTFA, that's not the business model. It's something they may have to do when patents of theirs (they apply for their own patents as well as buy some up) get infringed and the other party won't agree to license it, but that's no different than any other firm protecting its assets.

Keep in mind that most patent trolls would rather have a license than go to court. This is particularly true in areas where there are many players. Why spend 2-3 years in litigation when you can hit up 5-10 companies for a couple million each?

So I still don't see the difference. The big question is, do the investors / licensees get anything out of IV other than avoiding a lawsuit? By that I mean, do they get ideas and technical information that are actually valuable to their businesses? If they don't, then it doesn't really matter what IV claims their business model is - they really won't be substantively different from a patent troll.

Re:What do they get?

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

The big question is, do the investors / licensees get anything out of IV other than avoiding a lawsuit?

That is the question and we'll probably just have to wait and see before pronouncing them trolls. On the face of it, it seems like it could be a good idea. Kind of modeling after the university research model where they do the research come up with some innovation and just license it to other companies to produce rather than producing it themselves. Where they are more of a think-tank specializing in coming up with new ideas and leaving the manufacturing, marketing, etc to others who can specialize in that stuff. Doesn't sound like a bad idea at least in the abstract, but in todays envrionment of soo many patent suits, patent troll, etc, etc the sound does also tend to make one a bit uneasy.

Again, I think we have to take a wait and see approach here as it could be either really good or really bad.

Re:What do they get?

[dgatwood]

The real problem is that outside of a few relatively young fields like biotech, we ran out of truly innovative inventions decades ago. Mature industries grow through small, iterative improvements, most of which naturally lead to the next iterative improvement in an obvious way. Unfortunately, these minor improvements end up getting patented. Such patents do not actually benefit anyone, and their very existence is harmful.

Why these patents discourage innovation

[paladinwannabe2]

The worst thing that I see about companies like this is that they don't actually produce anything with their ideas. They wait until someone else intelligent has one of their ideas and actually does something with them. They make money off of someone else's business without contributing anything to help them in the first place.

Reform the patent system - new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You lose your patent right if you don't actually use it (i.e. you need to sell a product that uses that patented idea).

USPTO due diligence?

[zerofoo]

Why should the public be expected to police this sort of behavior? Doesn't the USPTO have a responsibility to refuse patent applications for things like public-domain/prior-art?

Saying the public should police patent activity is like saying that I should have my own tanks, soldiers, guns, and bombs instead of letting the US military do its job.

There needs to be accountability at the USPTO. Rubber-stamping every patent application that crosses the door is no way to run the patent office.

-ted

Re:USPTO due diligence?

[Agripa]

The patent office only checks selected published material for prior art so lots of it gets missed. This is especially bad for software because usually the source code is not openly published making it impossible to review. In theory open source should solve that particular issue but I am not aware that the patent office is even aware of it at a level where it would matter.

I claim Prior Art

[tygerstripes]

Actually, I've already started such a company and patented the notion. I'm just waiting until they've had a few big payouts before I pursue legal action for infringement.

What do you expect when it is all we have?

[maillemaker]

You know that Congress, Senate and the President are all gunning for greater IP protection and longevity...

Look, our Congress, Senate, and President all realize that Intellectual Property is all that we have left to bring to the global market. We cannot compete globally in manufacturing anymore - our labor force is just too expensive. One of the last products we can create and sell are [b]ideas[/b]. Of [b]course[/b] they are going to protect this - it is our last marketable asset! You could even argue that it is their [b]duty[/b] to protect our interests in this.

Steve

Re:What do you expect when it is all we have?

[stonecypher]

Actually, we can generate most things cheaper than any other nation on Earth, because of our advanced production technologies, which is why we are still the world's leading industrial power. It's the simple things which can be produced cheaply elsewhere, and even then it's a question of scale: can we develop custom robots to do the work cheaply enough to offset the benefits of nearly-free foreign labor plus shipping?

For almost every company in this country, the answer is "yes." Places like Nike and Reebok are an aberration: shoes are complex shapes to manufacture, but easy to explain, so in their case when those factories were built 30-40 years ago, that was the right way. You'll notice newer companies like Saucony and Teva are machine-manufactured domestically. Levi used to be a sweatshop employer too; now they cut the denim with high-pressure water.

We can compete with almost everyone on almost everything - and we do, quite successfully.

This guy knows exactly what he's doing

[caesar-auf-nihil]

I read the article and I can tell you right now that this guy has the patent system figured out exactly, and, he just got several more patents for free.

The patent system in its current form gives the patent holder the right to prevent others from using the patent - not protect your invention. It's a subtle legal argument that makes the patent system the broken form it is today. By preventing others from using your invention, you have the ability to make others either pay you to use your idea legally, or, give you the right to practice something that the other patent holder is preventing you from doing.

So, this guy, by patenting ideas, no matter how bogus they may be, will gain a lot of ability to stop anyone and everyone from practicing anything he comes up with. In effect - he'll be rich without every actually producing any working product - just patenting all sorts of new potential ideas that may or may not come to be.

What is really slick was how this guy just milked several geniuses for idea, and he won't have to pay them for it. The whole "meeting" where he's asking top notch people in their field to come up with improvements on state of the art - this was his way of getting all the ideas to patent, and he doesn't have to reward any of it back to the people who came up with the ideas since they probably, (and stupidly) gave it up to him by coming to his "innovation conference". Notice how all of it was getting recorded? This will be his "proof" of when the idea was come up with, giving whoever owns this the right to the patent. Even if let's say he does allow the person who was in the room who came up with the idea - I guarentee that the patent will be assigned to his corporation since he "reimbursed" that "inventor" for their time with payment - i.e. whatever he paid them to come to his innovation conference.

This person knows exactly what he's doing and is playing the patent game perfectly. At this rate, he will win, or his antics will slow down the ability for new ideas to actually be produced, and heaven forbid, laws may have to be written to stop this type of behavior. I doubt the latter will come to pass.

Re:This guy knows exactly what he's doing

[burnin1965]

"The patent system in its current form gives the patent holder the right to prevent others from using the patent - not protect your invention."

No, from uspto.gov...

The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention.

You can stop others from "making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention" but they could come up with a better solution to the same problem with their own invention, as long as it is a novel and unique approach. The problem is that many patents are ideas not inventions. The rules for patentability state that you cannot patent an idea, I suspect because it creates all the problems we have today, but since ideas are being patented, well, we have the problems of today.

"What is really slick was how this guy just milked several geniuses for idea, and he won't have to pay them for it."

The article was slim on details but it did explain that he was using greed as a motivator. When he collects from somebody else for a specific patent the greedy geniuses with their names on the patent will get a cut of the extortion, I mean licensing fees.

"This person knows exactly what he's doing and is playing the patent game perfectly. At this rate, he will win, or his antics will slow down the ability for new ideas to actually be produced"

There are many others he learned from, it is the same game played over and over since early in the industrialization of the United States. And there will not be an either/or on his winning or the slowing of ideas. Many others have already shown how to get rich by gaming the system so the odds are he will win, but at the same time it will slow down ideas because people and business will be discouraged by the gaming and will be caught up in worthless litigation. If he wins everyone else loses is how it works.

Warren Buffet

[Snorklefish]

Wouldn't it have been refreshing for Warren Buffet to set aside a few billion to fund a non-profit IP organization? I'd have them buy copyrights, patents and other IP... then turn-around and release the rights to the world.

Re:Warren Buffet

[CRCates]

Actually, with the very large donation to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, he's probably doing just what you recommended (albeit indirectly). The Gates Foundation has significant focus on licensing technology for use in developing countries (including pharma and other "patentable" technologies). The Gates Foundation stands to benefit from 80% of the 85% of Buffet's fortune that will be donated to charity. It's a pretty good bet that some of that money will go to taking otherwise patentable technologies and making them more accessible to the less fortunate. It might not be released to the world freely but it will be probably given to those who couldn't possibly afford the so-called "fair license feee". Good thought, though. I hope more people start thinking this way.

Re:Warren Buffet

[mgblst]

Oh come on. We all hate the current patent fiasco, but how does it really compare to the immediate problems they have in the developing worlds?

No, not the current Patent Commons efforts

[btarval]

I left out that, yes, I'm familiar with the Patent Commons effort at OSDL. This is not what I'm referring to.

The problem with the current implementation of the Commons is that it's passive, not aggressive. What I'm referring to is a handholding effort of helping developers through the Patent Filing process. I.e. a clear step up from the NoLo Press book on how to file a patent.

This is as opposed to the current Commons project, which is mostly just a collection effort of existing patents.

So only the rich can be inventors?

[maillemaker]

So if you invented the lightbulb, but lacked the capital to do anything about it, would it be OK if someone else came along and invented it after you who did have the capital to bring it to market? If you invented it, why shouldn't you get the benefits for your hard work and insight?

If only the people with the means to fully develop ideas have the right to Intellectual Property protection, the little guy with new ideas will perpetually be screwed.

Steve

Re:So only the rich can be inventors?

[paladinwannabe2]

Yeah, pretty much. If someone else invented the lightbulb independently of my work, why should I get to make money off their efforts? To put it from the other perspective: So if you invented the lightbulb, but someone else had patented glowing glass bulbs, should he be able to prevent you from selling your idea to others? If you invented it, why shouldn't you get the benefits for your hard work and insight?

Re:So only the rich can be inventors?

[paladinwannabe2]

If only the people who have the means to build up huge patent libraries have the right to Intellectual Property protection, the little guy with new ideas will perpetually be screwed.

[Video] Charlie Rose 1 h interview with Myhrvold

[Anonymous Coward]

57 min 48 sec - Nov 15, 2004
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1186228177 272865169

Haven't watched it, see for yourself.

Some corrections.

[maillemaker]

What is really slick was how this guy just milked several geniuses for idea, and he won't have to pay them for it. The whole "meeting" where he's asking top notch people in their field to come up with improvements on state of the art - this was his way of getting all the ideas to patent, and he doesn't have to reward any of it back to the people who came up with the ideas since they probably, (and stupidly) gave it up to him by coming to his "innovation conference"."

From TFA:

The goal wasn't just incremental advances but multibillion-dollar lightning bolts that could change the world and, not incidentally, make all of the participants rich.

Presumably, "all of the participants" include the people who came up with the ideas. I'm sure they were compensated for their time in one way or another and I'm also sure that every one of them knew what the purpose of the conference was. If they agreed to come and give ideas, that is their business.

So, this guy, by patenting ideas, no matter how bogus they may be, will gain a lot of ability to stop anyone and everyone from practicing anything he comes up with. In effect - he'll be rich without every actually producing any working product - just patenting all sorts of new potential ideas that may or may not come to be."

Typically when you file a patent you also have to provide an embodiment of the best way to implement the thing being patented. This is one reason why recently a patent for a "warp drive" was rejected by the USPTO - no workable implementation was provided ( http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2006/02/pto_re quests_mo.html ). It is thus not sufficient to just toss out cool ideas and get patents on them. You have to provide some documentation on how to actually build the thing.

Even if let's say he does allow the person who was in the room who came up with the idea - I guarentee that the patent will be assigned to his corporation since he "reimbursed" that "inventor" for their time with payment - i.e. whatever he paid them to come to his innovation conference."

This is typical. As an engineer, every company I have ever worked for has had me sign an intellectual property agreement as part of the condition of employement - that every idea I come up with belongs to my employer. Though my name is listed on the patents I have, they belong to my employers. I voluntarily agreed to this so that I could get the job. I'm sure all participants invited to the conference were made aware of what the purpose of the conference was, and the participants either volunteered or were or will be compensated in some way.

Steve

Re:Some corrections.

[caesar-auf-nihil]

I read the article as well - and the "compensation" wasn't clear of course. Some of the people in the room, especially if they were US government researchers, are prevented by law of accepting any type of compensation, and so their ideas would be "free", if they were foolish enough to give them, and I'm betting that they were snookered into it.

I agree that typically when you file a patent you do have to give prior art that you're improving upon, but the word "typically" comes into play here. This assumes that the patent reviewer actually understands the prior art and actually goes to look up that information and other information, which I can assure you DOES NOT happen regularly. To be fair, there is so much information out there that without better data mining tools, its almost impossible for a patent examiner to find all the prior art, let alone interpret the legalese (patentish dialect) found within those documents in a consistent manner all the time. Finally, and this is the key part, you don't necessarily have to provide proof that your invention will work - you may provide some documentation (an example case) but it may not support the claims at all. For example, I work in the polymer additives area, and I often come across patents stating that addtive X (composed of elements A and B) is an improvement over the existing art when used in a weight % range of y to z. They give 1 example in the patent (for example, lets say element A is aluminum (Al) and b is oxygen (O)) where this works, but in the claims they state that the composition can consist of element A being a member of the periodic table from group I to VII, and element B a member of the periodic table from periods 1 to 7. Basically they can patent the entire periodic table for this composition, whether they have any proof or not. This patent was granted, as was many others just like it, and its because the patent examiners don't catch this sort of crap.

Finally, I worked at a chemical company where the intellectual property was handled in the exact way you describe - I hand it over as part of my daily job in return for my wages. I'm not saying that such a practice is wrong - but - this practice does make it much easier to milk people for ideas and not always return said wealth back to the original true inventor.

Fortunately, that is not the case...

[maillemaker]

"If only the people who have the means to build up huge patent libraries have the right to Intellectual Property protection, the little guy with new ideas will perpetually be screwed."

While it is true that in order to for a patent to do you much good you must be able to defend your patent in court, fortunately IP laws protect the big and small fish alike.

Steve

Violence and Patents

[argoff]

...I really take issue with companies whose business models center around taking others to court. This type of business is an insult to the inventors who did not get proper credit for their discoveries.

The problem with patents is way deeper that that. The big problem is not now, but 20+ years from now as society will likely start to enter the replication age and 3d-printer/nano/bio technologies will eventually shift manufacturing away from the factory and back into the home. When this happens, some people will see this as a way to create tremendous wealth by offering creation related services. Unfortunately, others will see this as an opportunity to extract nearly infinite licensing royalities. In sum, manufacturing will become commoditized and there will be this huge pressure for the powers that be to coerce themsleves into every aspect of peoples private lives.

History teaches that when the labor force became commoditized in the mid 1800's - it blew up the plans of the plantation systems to leverage industrial technology to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. The consequence was the most bloody war in human history - the US civil war. It was considered the most bloody in human history because they were just beginning to figure out how to use these new technologies to kill people, but hadn't developed any adequete defences yet.

The point is that a similar problem will happen when patents become commoditized, and when those who wish to impose patent controlls resort to coercion to impose them. People don't seem to understand that patents by their very nature are violent and genocidial and could easially lead to the ruthless murder of billions as manufacturing becomes commoditized. In fact, their track record today isn't too impressive: eg, how safety devices in autos were held back 20 years because of patents, and how millions Africans died needlseely of AIDS because people tried to forbid them from making generics by suing in the world court. These are just some in a long list of exanples that have caused millions to die or suffer needlessly, right now most of the ruin is not obvious to us - but it certainly will eventually become so.

Re:Violence and Patents

[larytet]

this is by far the best analysis of the problem i read so far

Re:Violence and Patents

[Atzanteol]

how millions Africans died needlseely of AIDS because people tried to forbid them from making generics by suing in the world court.

Tell them I've found a cure - stop having sex with people who have AIDS. Their biggest problem is not access to medication, it's that they belive AIDS is a lie by the "white man" to keep them down or other general ignorances/stupidity.

Re:Violence and Patents

[argoff]

Tell them I've found a cure - stop having sex with people who have AIDS. Their biggest problem is not access to medication, it's that they belive AIDS is a lie by the "white man" to keep them down or other general ignorances/stupidity.

Their attitudes and how they got AIDS is compeltely irrelavent when it comes to the issue of wheter it is ok to sue their pants off to keep them from providing themselves adequete treatment.

Re:Violence and Patents

[malraid]

Ohhh... ok, so that explains why the "white man" doesn't get AIDS.

Re:Violence and Patents

[Nurf]

Ohhh... ok, so that explains why the "white man" doesn't get AIDS.

It is perhaps possible that you are not from Africa, and thus do not know that there are actually a lot of blacks in Africa that insist AIDS is a white conspiracy of some sort. The exact conspiracy changes, but the disbelief in AIDS doesn't.

There are several areas in Africa with 70% + HIV infection rates among blacks. On the whole, the whites dont get AIDS and the blacks do. There has been quite a bit of headscratching about this, and there seem to be several factors involved:

1) Male circumcision - Recent studies seem to show that male circumcision decreases the chance of a male becoming infected by a factor of around 7. That's a huge factor. A lot of whites are circumcised, but very few blacks are (in the high infection areas I am speaking about).
2) Social mores and ignorance - Several of the black cultures involved have very different attitudes to sex and safe sex. In many areas its almost impossible for the woman to get the man to wear a condom, because of both ignorance and the low social status of women. There is often basic ignorance of the concept of a germ theory of disease.
3) Whites tend to have fewer concurrent sexual partners. For those steeped in Western social mores or with a penchant for political correctness, I'm not saying either whites or blacks are heedless and promiscuous. However, I am saying that it is a lot more acceptable to have more than one concurrent stable sexual relationship in many black cultures, and this makes it easier for AIDS to spread than the white cultural tendency to have many partners in succession.
4) Fundamental disbelief in AIDS - It's hard to get people to take precautions when they think you are talking out your ass. When people die, the disease that killed them is pointed to as the cause of death, not AIDS. So, malaria, tuberculosis, and the flu have been really bad lately.

This means there are areas with near 100% infection rates in blacks, and very low infection rates in whites. It has nothing to do with race, and probably everything to do with social mores, conventions, and culture.

I don't claim to be the last word on this, but I came to the conclusions above after speaking to a fair number of people, some of them paramedics, and some of them farmers in remote areas.

Re:Violence and Patents

[also-rr]

The consequence was the most bloody war in human history - the US civil war. It was considered the most bloody in human history because they were just beginning to figure out how to use these new technologies to kill people,

Might you have a cite? Accoding to wikipedia it is out by two orders of magnitude. (Circa half a million compared to over 60 million for WW2.)

Re:Violence and Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Violence and Patents

[Atzanteol]

I disagree completely. If every time I stabbed myself in the leg with a knife you had to pay for my medical bills, how many stabs would it take before you simply took my knife away rather than pay for my bills?

These people need education, not treatments...

Re:Violence and Patents

[argoff]

oops, bloodiest war in US history and of the 19th century (in terms of US lives lost)....

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060206&s=hahn0206 06

Re:Violence and Patents

[forwardtogether]

Yes, the AIDS pandemic in Africa is all to do with those swarthy Africans and their ravenous sexual appetites...

Of course, according to a UNAIDS overview there are two million children in sub-Saharan africa living with HIV or AIDS; The "vast majority of children who are infected with HIV" are infected via Mother-to-child transmission or through contact with infected blood or unsterilised needles. The WHO estimates that unsafe blood transfusions result in around 5-10% of new HIV infections, and according to Safe Blood for Africa around half of the 6,000,000 blood transfusions which take place in sub-Saharan Africa every year use blood not tested for infectious diseases. Are we to also disregard rape victims? According to estimates from the United Nations Population Fund, around two-thirds of the 60,000 women raped during the course of the Rwandan genocide may have been infected by AIDS. As per the previously cited article, the use of rape as a weapon of war is becoming more common and resources to help reduce infection rates in the immediate onset of rape are stretched.

Of course, education is a crucial factor in stemming the tide of the AIDS pandemic in Africa: programs dedicated to public education on AIDS in Uganda have helped raise awareness of the disease and that country has seen a steady decline in the rate of new infections in the past decade. However, the argument that education is the only route to wiping out the pandemic is terribly vacuous.

Public education projects will consistently fail unless accompanied by a systematic response to institutional weaknesses: Efforts to improve transfusion safety, the state of hygiene and nutrition and, yes, medication. A leaflet on abstinence will not save children infected through mother-to-child transmission, but antiretroviral drugs can help treat their disease and prevent the ravages of AIDS from carrying on from generation to generation.

Re:Violence and Patents

[dimension6]

how millions Africans died needlseely of AIDS because people tried to forbid them from making generics by suing in the world court.

You're taking the fact that AIDS drugs exist for granted, though. If there had not been any financial incentive for companies to develop and produce the drugs, then they certainly wouldn't have done so. Yes, companies are greedy and the pharmas are (probably) gouging, but there is more to the picture than it seems...

Re:Violence and Patents

[chris_eineke]

Your response is low on facts and high on fluff. I did a quick GoogleCheck(tm) and discovered that the studies you are talking about haven't been published in a journal yet. Are you a troll?

The extraordinary history of circumcision as a panaceaa, and before that as a rite, strongly suggest that latter-day claims of prophylaxis should be regarded with a sceptical, if not jaundiced, eye. Few if any men can be truly neutral about circumcision. The temptation to justify what was done to oneself seems almost irresistible.

- from http://www.circumstitions.com/Short-HIV.html

Re:Violence and Patents

[Nurf]

Am I a troll? No.

There are areas where the black rate of infection is very high and the white rate is very low. Nobody knows exactly why, but everyone has an opinion. I tried to give all the reasons I have heard that might make sense and that I think are most likely. Note the careful use of words like "seems" and "probably" in selected places.

The quote I saw about circumcision said there was a massive improvement, and they stopped the test early because it seemed unethical to not allow the uncircumcised participants the benefits of circumcision. I couldn't find the article I read, but I did find this, which may be about the same test, but I am not sure as I don't think the article I read said anything about it being in South Africa:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_hiv _recent_rep.cfm?dr_cat=1&show=yes&dr_DateTime=10-2 6-05#33323

It's all still pretty new, and I am sure there will be some arguing back and forth.

I'm not sure why you would think I am trolling. I am just telling you what I know from things I have read and from people I have spoken to, and I happen to be from Africa myself, so I tend to see things rather differently than people from outside the continent. I have no sacred cows here, and am a bit confused why someone would be annoyed by my post. Tell me, why do you think there is such a large disparity in infection rates?

Besides the comment about circumcision, do you have any other particular problems with what I said?

(Hint: Someone who says something you disagree with is not necessarily a troll, and might be willing to speak civilly with you if civilly approached)

Re:Violence and Patents

[chris_eineke]

Please read the links I supplied before going on about this nonsense that circumcision prevents AIDS.

Re:Violence and Patents

[Nurf]

Er. Try reading what I said. Does that look like "going on"? Rabid frothing at the mouth? Promises of death and dismemberment if you don't come around to my view?

I had a look at the links. The one was a list of all the things circumcision was supposed to help with in the past. Yup. Long list of snake oil there... and totally irrelevant. Yeah, maybe it has been used as an excuse in the past, but that doesn't mean it has to be wrong this time around. Leeches were used for everything not too long ago. Now they are used for certain very specific problems and work well too.

The other link was a paper from 2000 interspersed with comments. So? A six year old refutation is given as proof that of a study from a year ago is flawed. The study in question is acknowledged as the first to use random selection and a large group of people, and seems to have been pretty well received.

You really didn't read a word I said, nor followed my link, did you?

Heh. And I just noticed that the bottom of the page says "Back to the Intactivism Index page" which goes to the root of the pages you linked, and where it says "Welcome to the Intactivism Pages" and tags itself as "The struggle for genital integrity and against the involuntary genital modification of children of any sex". It sounds like a worthy cause, and also a terribly biased source of refutations.

Also, I haven't come down hard on the side of circumcision either. I just presented what I knew, with qualifications. You are the one coming across like a bouncer in a bad bar. It appears you have an axe to grind, and you're grinding it now.

I'm not even advocating that people be circumcised. I'm just pointing out that already existing differences in rates of male circumcision may have made a difference. Get off your soap box and engage in real discussion, or stop wasting my time with dismissive comments.

Now. Last chance if you want me to reply. Say something substantive and address my questions, or I will ignore you henceforth.

(Hint: I don't really care much about male circumcision one way or another, and your dismissive and rude tone means you are on thin ice)

Re:Violence and Patents

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

There has been quite a bit of headscratching about this, and there seem to be several factors involved:

Don't forget that bizarre turn-on -- dry sex. Painful for women, but apparently strangely enjoyable for men, it also significantly increases the chance of infection for both. I'm not talking about women who have sex when they aren't in the mood. It is a lot more extreme then that -- some women use chemicals like bleach to remove natural lubricants and irritate the tissue to make it swell up, others actually insert little bags of vaginal potpourri to absorb the fluids and dry themselves out - I bet Martha Stewart is already making plans to break into that market.

Anyone who thinks I'm kidding, here are 3 articles, out of thousands, on the practice

Salon 1999
Time 2001
The Lancet 1998

They could use a marketing campaign over there - "Lube - it does a body good!"

Re:Violence and Patents

[stonecypher]

The big problem is not now, but 20+ years from now as society will likely start to enter the replication age and 3d-printer/nano/bio technologies will eventually shift manufacturing away from the factory and back into the home. When this happens, some people will see this as a way to create tremendous wealth by offering creation related services. Unfortunately, others will see this as an opportunity to extract nearly infinite licensing royalities.

Within 20+ years, all current patents will have been expired anyway. That kind of patent only lasts 17 years. If you think that it's not okay for me to ask someone to pay for my invention in the 17 years after its use, just because they're the ones doing the manufacturing, then I don't know what to tell you; it's not as if the current manufacturers don't. With the shift in work burden comes also the shift in responsibility burden.

Do you think iTunes is okay? What about CDs made from your iTunes tracks? Do you get to sell those, or do you need to pay the musician?

It's really the same thing.

Re:Violence and Patents

[argoff]

Rights don't revolve arround "what's in it for me", but an understanding that it is in your best interest to make it your best interest to look out for other people's best interst.

Re:Violence and Patents

[stonecypher]

The modern patent costs almost $400,000 and 2.2 man years. Most people aren't willing to dispose of that much money or time in the name of the public good. It's a fact of life: inventors have to eat too.

That's not how patents work...

[maillemaker]

Yeah, pretty much. If someone else invented the lightbulb independently of my work, why should I get to make money off their efforts?

Because you invented it first. Without this kind of protection, why bother inventing anything? Just wait for other people to invent it, and then manufacture their invention. No matter that you spent your entire life savings and untold years coming up with the idea.

To put it from the other perspective: So if you invented the lightbulb, but someone else had patented glowing glass bulbs, should he be able to prevent you from selling your idea to others? If you invented it, why shouldn't you get the benefits for your hard work and insight?

This is an oversimplification. If you invent a specific kind of lightbulb, say, an incandescent bulb, this gives you protection over "glowing glass bulbs" that glow by means of a glowing filament. But this leaves the door wide open for other kinds of "glowing glass bulbs" - say LED, or Neon, flourescent, or whatever. It is difficult to patent something as generic as a "glowing glass bulb" - you must demonstrate a specific best embodiment of your invention.

And if I invented some specific rendition of a lightbulb, then I should get the benefits of my hard work and insight that brought that idea to be. It does not provide me any protection, however, against someone inventing a better, significantly different lightbulb.

Steve

Re:That's not how patents work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you invented it first.

That's a completely antisocial attitude. The other inventor just put their entire life savings and untold years coming up with ingenious work, and you would have me rob him of the proceeds of his work, just because I did something similar? Aren't we supposed to live in a free society, where everyone is allowed to apply their talents to the best of their ability?

Without this kind of protection, why bother inventing anything? Just wait for other people to invent it, and then manufacture their invention.

Why do people do anything in any field, if they don't get monopoly protection for 20 years? Somehow even lawyers can carry out their own business and develop innovative new ideas for legal arguments, although they don't get monopoly rights to them. The answer of course is that you try out new ideas to prosper in business. Competition in a free market ensures that the best solutions win out.

Re:That's not how patents work...

[paladinwannabe2]

Perhaps you didn't notice the nice bold Independently that I put in my comment there. Perhaps you deliberately ignored it. Either way, I don't feel that I have a right to profit from any work other than my own. If they copied my design, then they are profiting off my work, and I probably deserve a share of the profits. If they independently came up with something similar, they are not profiting off my efforts, and I don't deserve any of their money.

Independent invention occurs all the time. I remember 'inventing' the mergesort algorithm in one of my first C++ classes as a logical modification of quicksort. Of course, it was discovered and used by people long before I found it, but I never knew that until later. Now suppose that mergesort had been patented. Should someone be allowed to prevent me from using something I invented just because they thought of it first? It's not like I was aware that their algorithm even existed.

To use our original analogy: Suppose you and I each invented lightbulbs that were practically identical- yours may be tube shaped and mine bulb shaped, but they are similar enough that you infringe my patent for "a device that illuminates by running a current through a resisting material in a sealed glass container." Now let's say that I make it to the patent office a 5 years before you do, but never do anything with my patent (so you've never heard of me). Now suppose that you manage to find someone willing to make your lightbulbs, and start selling them for hefty profits. I sue as soon as I notice what you're doing. Do I deserve any of your profits because I invented it first?

Another example: I come up with a nifty new type of crayon that has heat-sensitive color. I get sued by Crayola for violating some patent I never heard of (Crayola has thousands of crayon-related patents). I am no longer allowed to sell these crayons (even though Crayola isn't making them either).

What you seem to believe is that whenever someone comes up with an idea, no one else should be allowed to come up with the same idea later- or at least, not be able to do anything with it. You may be ignorant of how easy it is to unintentionally duplicate something someone else has done- especially in software, but it occurs all the time in other industries as well. As for myself, I've designed some very interesting algorithms, and have considered patenting some of them- even though they would belong to my company, I'd still get my name on them. Even if the patents go through, however, I doubt that my work is truely the first of its kind- I'm sure other people have done similar things before, even if I've never heard of them.

Re:That's not how patents work...

[maillemaker]

>Perhaps you didn't notice the nice bold Independently that I put in my comment there. Perhaps you deliberately ignored it.
>Either way, I don't feel that I have a right to profit from any work other than my own. If they copied my design, then they are
>profiting off my work, and I probably deserve a share of the profits. If they independently came up with something similar, they are
>not profiting off my efforts, and I don't deserve any of their money.

I didn't address it because it doesn't matter. Our patent system has been set up to reward inventors. In the probably rare case where two people or entities simultaneously invent the same thing, it has been chosen to award the patent to the person who submits first. Other mechanisms could be implemented, I suppose - some kind of joint patent perhaps. The point is, it's going to be very difficult to try and determine on a case-by-case basis who came up with an existing idea independently or who just copied the original. So, we just give protection to whoever submits first. If your solution, instead, is to give protection to no one, so that everyone who independently comes up with ideas can use them, then you have no safegaurd against people who would just copy outright.

>Independent invention occurs all the time. I remember 'inventing' the mergesort algorithm in one of my first C++ classes as a logical modification of
>quicksort. Of course, it was discovered and used by people long before I found it, but I never knew that until later. Now suppose that mergesort had
>been patented. Should someone be allowed to prevent me from using something I invented just because they thought of it first? It's not like
>I was aware that their algorithm even existed.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it. Likewise, ignorance of intellectual property is no excuse for violating its protections. If you are doing truly innovative work, then you are probably, or should be, aware of prior art.

>To use our original analogy: Suppose you and I each invented lightbulbs that were practically identical- yours may be tube
>shaped and mine bulb shaped, but they are similar enough that you infringe my patent for "a device that illuminates by running a
>current through a resisting material in a sealed glass container." Now let's say that I make it to the patent office a 5 years before you do,
>but never do anything with my patent (so you've never heard of me). Now suppose that you manage to find someone willing to make your
>lightbulbs, and start selling them for hefty profits. I sue as soon as I notice what you're doing. Do I deserve any of your profits because
>I invented it first?

Yes. And it's shame on me for not having done adequate patent research and getting bitten by using patented prior art in my product.

>What you seem to believe is that whenever someone comes up with an idea, no one else should be allowed to come up with the
>same idea later- or at least, not be able to do anything with it.

Only for a fixed amount of time. This is the tradeoff for a patent. In exchange for making the secret of your invention public, you get protection for a certain number of years.

>You may be ignorant of how easy it is to unintentionally duplicate something someone else has done- especially in software,
>but it occurs all the time in other industries as well.

As an engineer with patents, I'm well aware of how easy it is, and I have to design around IP all the time. Would it be nice if I didn't have to worry about it? Sure. But then I wouldn't get any protection for my efforts, and the things that I and my employer invent would be manufactured in some third world country without us getting any compensation at all. We'd both soon be out of business. I'll take the protection.

Steve

Re:That's not how patents work...

[paladinwannabe2]

Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it. Likewise, ignorance of intellectual property is no excuse for violating its protections. If you are doing truly innovative work, then you are probably, or should be, aware of prior art.

1. Actually, Ignorance of the law- especially non-obvious laws- is usually a great excuse for breaking it. It won't let you avoid punishment, but it usually gets you a lighter sentence. Some intellectual property, like copyright infringement, requires knowledge of the work you are infringing. So ignorance does let you get away with what might otherwise be IP violations.

2. If you are doing truly innovative work, shouldn't that be the hardest to find prior art?

I suspect that the reason we disagree on this issue is that we are in different fields. I have no real problem with patents in general, I just have problems with patents on software. The problem we are disscussing- independent invention- occurs all of the time in software. You seem to treat it like it's not a big deal in your field, so maybe it isn't. Also, software is already protected by copyright (which does everything I want it to do), unlike lightbulbs, which are only protected by patents. As a result you need patents to protect your ideas, but I don't need them to protect mine. I'm fine with letting you have patents in your world- but I hope you understand that what is a blessing to most people in your field is a curse to most people in mine.

Men in Black

[Insomnia Slim]

Sorry, this exchange from Men in Black just entered my mind as I read this:

J: How do you guys fund all of this?
K: Oh, we hold the patents on a number of important innovations. See this? This will replace CDs soon.

Ownership is 9/10 of the law... and owning innovative products and techniques make for lucrative cash cows. It's worked for the pharmaceutical companies for years. A friend of mine is a patent attorney; one of his jobs is to figure out how to re-patent a medication once it reaches the 9 year patent limit. This is to prevent a generic from being manufactured.

It's just sad sometimes.

Re:Men in Black

[Jaxoreth]

A friend of mine is a patent attorney; one of his jobs is to figure out how to re-patent a medication once it reaches the 9 year patent limit. This is to prevent a generic from being manufactured.

I shudder to imagine what your enemies do...

Patent as a Placeholder (Until it gets challenged)

[loose electron]

The patent system has a lot of problems, especially considering the nature of many patents not being understood, even by members of the patent office.

From what I have seen (applying for patents) is that if the patent application is not totally off the wall, it gets granted, after a cursory inspection. (Perpetual motion machines, and "the wheel" tend to be disallowed, but not much else.)

Due to that, the patent serves as a placeholder (legal record of date and content) in time, until it gets challenged in court. When it gets challenged, then it (might!) be examined on its merits.

Even there, it is a bit of a joke. Juries are not qualified to review a lot of intellectual property issues. Any Slash-Dot reader would be thrown off a patent trial because their technical knowledge would be too great to consider them "impartial" - the court wants ignorance, or a "blank slate" for a juror.

IMHO - A proper "jury of peers" for intellectual property law would be a group of scientist and engineer types. However, that does not happen.

There are a glut of patents out there that will never survive court challenges, even with a jury of non-technical types. A pile of patents on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cell phone chips all are in direct conflict with each other. Nobody will bother to sort that out.

The alternative is "trade secrets" which was the method we used in the disk drive world. Things changed so quickly there that by the time you got a patent, the product would be obolete anyhow. Product life cycle of a disk drive is 3-6 months, and a patent takes 2-3 years to issue.

http://www.effectiveelectrons.com/

Their part of TFA is "spin"

[giafly]

The model is patenting random science fiction, then taking a cut when other people turn some of it into science fact. "Getting a variety of top minds to focus on how to make major technological advances" is only worthy if you intend to develop those advances quickly, not if you end up holding them back.

Funding

[zymano]

Who is funding the troll ?

Who would be so stupid to give hundreds of millions to sue people.

I hope he loses his shorts

Re:Funding

[adminispheroid]

What very big company with enormous cash reserves is facing growing competition from open source software, and would find it convenient if said OSS got closed down by patent lawsuits, but would prefer to avoid the anti-trust prosecution that might result if they did it themselves?

Q. Why does a rabbi always answer a question with a question?
A. And why should a rabbi not always answer a question with a question?

Unethical scum

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that this scumbag used to work for Microsoft. Obviously the unethical business practices have carried across.
It is sad that there are such pathetic, and greedy parasites about. Any one of us could make lots of money with a similar scam. The reason that we don't, if that we observe some ethical norm. This fucker doesn't, and as a consequence, is an Enemy of The People. Such people out to be locked up in a prison with all the other con-men and hucksters.

Helpful suggestion

[adminispheroid]

To sustain this business model, this company is going to have to make sure nobody closes the huge loopholes in patent law on which they depend. So they're going to need to spend a lot of money on lobbying, and especially on the usual astroturfing and fake-think-tank PR firms. Here's a suggestion. Don't go around hiring the same old ones, because everybody knows they're fake. Especially don't hire the ones that have been outed by the tobacco lawsuits. Instead, start your own. How much can a dozen fake grassroots organizations cost? Seems like each one will only need about one employee, so you can have the whole dozen for well under $2 million a year. And here's another suggestion: set them to work doing plausible campaigns for whatever their ostensible purpose is, then they'll look more credible when they go to work on your issue. That way they won't come out looking like Americans for Tax Reform -- you have to look hard to find those Americans reforming any tax other than the tobacco tax.

Value for Money

[Mutatis Mutandis]

Well, the pharmaceutical company probably did spend somewhere between $400 and $800 million on the original development of the drug, so if it did not recover its R&D costs yet (and many drugs do not, not before the patent expires) then they may have a moral case.

I think this would be a good principle, if it could be generalized: Link the expiry date of the patent to the investment in it, or better to the return on investment. Say, minimum five years from the day of filing, plus a year extra for every $50 million that was not recovered from the R&D investment within that period.

That would mean that patents that are just sitting on the shelf without someone making an effort to develop a product would expire faster than they do now, while people who do invest in the development of a product are rewarded with extended patent rights.

Re:Value for Money

[tinkerghost]

You ever see some of the accounting tricks companies pull to show how little profit they showed when it comes to tax time & then how much profit they made come investment prospectus?
A very nice and an eminently reasonable suggestion, if we add that a request for an extention is also accompanied by a forensic audit by the govt to prove you haven't turned a profit yet.

Most patents are useless

[Tweekster]

even when they are "responsible" patents. Because some other company can make the same type of product and just do it differently or simply ignore the patent because the litigation is just too damn costly.

Even though the menu patent by creative / apple is stupid. It shows how useless having a patent is. It didnt change anything and wont ever matter but will result in millions of dollars down the drain via lawyers.

Myhrvold? Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

For a bunch of self-proclaimed "Mensa level geniuses", it's truly laughable that they haven't been able to produce even 1 invention after 6 years -- 6 YEARS!!!, of their much publicized "genius brainstorming sessions".

Worse yet, they have to resort to having that Detlin-crooked-lawyer-extraordinaire idiot, who in fact is the man who first coined the phrase "patent troll", to head their patent buying efforts; and as for their patent buying tactics, it was recently written up in an IP news journal that they rely on fake shell companies to trick inventors to sell their patents to them! TRULY reprehensible & pathetic bunch of LOSERS!!!

And what was Myhrvold's actual legacy to Microsoft? Oh yeah, he was responsible for inventing "Microsft Bob". Maybe he should get a Nobel for that, like the Nobel Bill gates is trying to BUY with his showcase new devotion to "philanthropy".

It's the cornerstone of a new keiretsu

[gregor-e]

I think the idea probably isn't so much to charge royalties or make money via litigation as to have a tempting body of IP to exchange with other companies who agree to cross-license their IP to all members in the Myrvold keiretsu. If the IP stockpile grows large enough, members could have a huge advantage over non-members. Kind of like an open-source club that's only open to members and that charges massive dues. Of course, membership is a double-edged sword, since your cohort are now also your direct competitors against which you have no IP shield. So it'd make sense for everyone in the keiretsu to buy ownership of each other. Maybe pool shares into a keiretsu mutual fund as a condition of membership?

Re:Great! Now R&D will be outsourced to India/

[Flyboy Connor]

Sounds like a plan. Litigation firm: "You people over in Europe and Asia. You go innovate and enjoy the good life on your continents. Then we'll patent your stuff in the US and sue the crap out of any American that wants to apply your inventions."

Simple Solution to patent trolls

[ChrisGilliard]

Require companies to show that they have/or had the intent to develop the technologies they patented. These patent trolls would have a hard time showing that they actually intended to develop these technologies and thus their patents would be useless. On the otherhand, startups (and other inventors) would be able to use the system as it was intended to be used by disclosing their ideas in a protected way.

Re:Simple Solution to patent trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

A problem with your idea: the patent troll would contract with a real company to develop their "technology" (ie. patented ideas). Even if you imagine you would be able to limit their freedom of contract (not likely), a patent troll could just as well operate as a wholly-owned subdivision of a real company. Good luck proving that they aren't doing anything with their patents.

Re:Simple Solution to patent trolls

[ChrisGilliard]

A problem with your idea: the patent troll would contract with a real company to develop their "technology" (ie. patented ideas).

What would be wrong with that? If a company comes up with an idea and then contracts with another company to develop their product, we're ok. What we want to stop is companies that just come up with ideas and never pursue them and then sue anyone else who actually does the work of developing that technology.

Good luck proving that they aren't doing anything with their patents.

In the case of the company that this article discusses, I believe it would be quite easy to prove that they aren't pursuing the majority of their patents because their whole model is just to come up with ideas and patent them. In the case of a big company like IBM or something, yeah you have a point, but I think the biggest offenders of the whole patent thing has been companies that have no real business model other than Suing people (i.e. SCO). Obviously, this solution wouldn't fix problems like Amazon's one click patent or the hyperlink patent, but hey, it's a start and it's easy to implement.

A double edged sword.

[S.P.B.Wylie]

As I see it, there are some distinct advantages and disadvantages to the idea of patents.

The Good: Patents protect the inventor, and therefore encourage invention. The idea that they can get a patent encourages people who don't want to have to go through all the business stuff to invent: "hey, I can just allow the use of the patent for a fee". Also, it (the idea at least) protects the little guy from the big guy. Say you make an invention, and put it on the market. If there are no patents, a bigger guy can copy the product and put it on the market with way more push then someone small could. If you had no patents, only big corporations would be inventing, because they are the only ones who can profit.

The Bad: It takes away from the community, and encourages monopoly like actions. First, it limits access to the public, and if it is an idea that furthers improved living, either though encouraging innovation or otherwise, it therefore limits improved life for all. The problem is worse if the product is useful to the point of near necessity. They are the only ones who can make the product, so they set the price. If it is a "must have" item, they can raise the price and people will buy it anyway.

Notice I said "the idea", because in reality the system is much more corrupt, as previous posters have shown. In a way, we are fighting the big beast of capitalism, a system that allows the big to crush the little. In reality, the little guy can't win very often. It takes money to litigate, and guess who has the money: the big guy. The big guy can also afford lobbyists to make the patent laws swing his way. Then there is this "patent before it is invented" crap. Don't we have lobbyists somewhere on slashdot that can push for a law that makes it so you must have the invention to patent it?

offtopic, mod as

[Anonymous Coward]

Go Team Venture!

Re:Great! Now R&D will be outsourced to India/

[cpatil]

What US ? Well the market will also shift to Asia and Europe. Check out where NOKIA is selling its mobiles. Check out latest top 100 Tech companies released by BusinessWeek, to know where America stands. However, American institutional investors are making money ;-)

Of course it is!

[maillemaker]

>That's a completely antisocial attitude.

That's because IP protection is a capitalistic construct, not a socialist one.

>The other inventor just put their entire life savings and untold years coming up with ingenious work, and you would have me rob him of the
>proceeds of his work, just because I did something similar? Aren't we supposed to live in a free society, where everyone is allowed to apply
>their talents to the best of their ability?

While sad, that is the way the system works. I don't think it's particularly fair for two entities who happen to simultaneously do invent the same thing. Fortunately, I suspect this happens very infrequently.

>Why do people do anything in any field, if they don't get monopoly protection for 20 years? Somehow even lawyers can carry out their own
>business and develop innovative new ideas for legal arguments, although they don't get monopoly rights to them. The answer of course is
>that you try out new ideas to prosper in business. Competition in a free market ensures that the best solutions win out.

No, the answer is that no matter how many legal constructs get created, you still need a lawyer to avail yourself to them, so they are still secure in their livelihood.

Competition in a completely free market without IP protection means that every gizmo invented in the US will be duplicated in some other country for a tenth of the cost. Is that what you want?

Steve

Re:Of course it is!

[bit01]

Fortunately, I suspect this happens very infrequently.

"I suspect" is not adequate basis for law that causes as much interference in the citizen's business as patents.

Patents are badly broken, everything from completely ignoring multiple, simultaneous invention to ignoring inventions "whose time has come" to ignoring whether an invention requires significant investment (and thus worth blocking billions of people from using it for 20 years) to ignoring the fact that large classes of ideas don't have protection and work just fine (e.g. after careful research I open a business in a particular area - there is nothing to stop somebody else opening a similar business right next door) to completely arbitrary categories saying one thing is different from another (meaning some anonymous, non-inventive bureaucrat gets to decide whether somebody is really being inventive) to etc.

Patents as currently defined are basically meaningless as an indicator of inventiveness, they have very little basis in physical reality or actual thought and are just arbitrary tools for assorted lowlife to parasitise those around them.

Competition in a completely free market without IP protection means that every gizmo invented in the US will be duplicated in some other country for a tenth of the cost. Is that what you want?

Given that the US is less than 5% of the world's population and the US could copy what the other 95% of the world is inventing you're just fear mongering.

I would actually support law that promoted intellectual effort in limited ways but the system we've got currently is atrocious, with the justification for massive interference in the citizen's business being little more than hand waving.

---

Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.

Re:Of course it is!

[maillemaker]

>"I suspect" is not adequate basis for law that causes as much interference in the citizen's business as patents.

Are you postulating that in fact simultaneous or near-simultaneous patent applications are commonplace?

>Given that the US is less than 5% of the world's population and the US could copy what the other 95% of the world is inventing you're just fear mongering.

First of all, you are making the assumption that the US does not enjoy a leadership role in innovation, which we do. The other 95% of the world, certainly the third world, has much more to gain by copying our work than we do copying theirs.

Secondly, even if the US did copy what the other 95% of the world is inventing, since most of the rest of the world can manufacture it for far less than we can, what good would it do us if we can't manufacture it for a profit? That's not fearmongering, that's plain fact.

Steve

Big buck is fscking you up.

[lunaticLT]

Myhrvold's bold words might be easily dismissed if they came from somebody else. But you have to take him seriously. The brainy mathematical physicist, who made a fortune during 14 years as a top Microsoft Corp. scientist, exuberantly engages in conversation about almost everything, from cooking (he trained at a French culinary school) to cosmology (he studied curved space-time with Cambridge University's Stephen Hawking) to paleontology (he's a sponsor of dinosaur digs). Myhrvold is perhaps the only person in the world with both the scientific credibility to attract Intellectual Ventures' all-star roster of inventors and the business contacts to lure the company's blue-chip investors, which include Microsoft, Intel, Apple Computer, Sony, and Nokia.

Re:Violence and Patents Call me...

[davidsyes]

A violence-oriented patent pre-surrender disclaimer could be something like this:

"Owner of patent hereby sells/surrenders all or some percentage or all of his/her controlling interests in the patentable product invention you already reviewed under non-disclosure and non-compete agreements. You agreed/affirmed/acknowledged that you had not, were not, and did not in the immediate future plan to work on any project or product related to the subject of this transfer/sales/co-sharing documents.

Also, you also agree that you are NOT part of, nor have you BEEN part of, nor do you KNOW OF any patent-trolling/scooping firms which are able to or likely to discover and surreptitiously attempt to gain access to controlling interests or part ownership or total ownership of this subject matter.

Therefore, you agree that if you are found to have polluted, compromised or caused loss of control of this patent to adversarial parties, you will forfeit some SIGNIFICANT aspect of the quality of your life, whether physical, emotional, economic or other ways of making you suffer."

Specifically, if I have anything to sell after creation, I will insert a clause that no microsoft, or any patent-trolling entities may be party to the patenting or sales or controlling interests. If such parties gain access, then their stakes are to be viewed as surreptitious, uninvited, and therefore null and void.

My ideas (if I cannot cheaply and successfully patent them myself and use them as I envision) are to be jointly owned by myself and the forces of open source, INTERNATIONALLY, to ensure that NO ONE country, company, or entity can obtusely hog what I want to see take a foothold. (Yeah, I read somewhere that the US and Japan are the only countries to allow or encourage software patents while most other countries disallow them... my idea is to create a patent that obstructs the ability of anyone else to deny the smaller man/woman developer from advancing my ideas... and ideally, enough inertia would surround my ideas to stay ahead of the larger corps, no matter HOW MUCH money they throw at the problem...)

Call me an asshole, but at least I am not a BIG asshole, compared to some of the others out there who'd prefer to eradicate from the timeline me and those who hold ideas such as mine/ours.

I am thinking one way of doing this is to seek sympathetic parties, maybe 100-500 engineers who donate say $50 to $200 so that the patent attorney team and knowledgeable open source talent can ensure the proper filing and licensing measures are taken so that no one party has enough individual control. No one or no number of named assignees could sell their "stake" to say, ms or some patent trolling scoop-house. The donors would have some measure of financial responsibility oversight via a tracking or token system so they can make sure their donations are used for the purposes of filing and some amount of dev team financing. Any excess donation would go back to the donors, or to open source-friendly orgs that could use some case injection.
---

HEHEHEH FUNNY: Slash word image: "autocrat"

NO you cannot patent ideas

[Acer500]

While it is a widely held belief - even being propagated by some patent offices with misleading titles like "Looking after your ideas" http://www.patent.gov.uk/patent/info/ideas.pdf -, no, you cannot patent an idea (well, software patents are the closest thing to that), you can patent an expression of an idea though (invention usually).

Here's an article from EFF's Jon Perry on Wired: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.id eas_pr.html ,
and a less dense and clear (but probably outdated) from the Enterpreneur Network: http://tenonline.org/art/9010.html

The solution to patent trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply change the patent law so that anybody who holds a patent has one year (or whatever's reasonable) to bring a product to market that uses this patent (or license it to somebody who will).

  If the time passes, and no product is out, an extension can be filed if it can be proven that the owners/licensers made good-faith attempts to get one out.

Otherwise, it goes into the public domain.

Furthermore, the owner of a patent cannot sue for infringement until they get this product out (lawsuit can be retroactive to the time the patent was granted).

I'd also like to see the same thing happen with copyrights. Own the rights to the Beatles' "Let it Be"? You'd better be selling the song somewhere, or letting somebody else do it on your behalf. If not, it's right into the public domain.

The concept of intellectual property is not inherently bad. However, if the owners aren't going to do something with it, then it should be taken away from them and given to the public.

A question about prior art

[1iar_parad0x]

I'm obviously not a patent lawyer. However, where does the line for potential litigation get drawn? Could a company like Bell Labs or some old CS researchers, who have clear prior art, claim some sort of rights to 'operating systems' in general or some type of key scheduling/memory managment algorithm? Could Edgar Codd claim rights to a relational database? If not, why not?