Slashdot Mirror
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..."
I hope that this venture exercises some restraint in its persuits.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
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".
839*929
There will be no R&D or manufacturing business in the US shortly.
Only lawyer and lobbying firms.
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.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
If somebody patented frivolous litigation, these guys would be screwed.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
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.
Hmm. Perhaps if it had recruited a few extrovert genuises instead...?
Cheers,
Ian
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.
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.
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.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
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.
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.
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.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
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.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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.
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.
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.
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/
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
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.
No Sigs!