Nathan Myhrvold and the Business Of Invention

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

Comments

Ideas

[QuantumG]

First of all, the article goes on and on about brainstorming... which is universally known to be a really bad way to come up with ideas. If you have an idea and you want to flesh out what it is good for or, better yet, what it is not good for, then brainstorming is great way to do it, but inspiration does not come from brainstorming - it comes in the shower or when you're walking the dog or whatever.

Then there's this whole "ideas have value" thing. Their whole business model is based on that tenant. Which is why they're not actually selling these patents to anyone, no-one goes out looking for a great idea to pour money into and create a business from.. investors go looking for *people* who have both a great idea and the technical skills to turn it into a workable business.. you can't just pick up someone else's idea and run with it, no matter how well the patent is written, and there's never written well. So how are they making their money? By litigation. So they're not actually helping progress, they're hindering it.

All in all, its a dot com era idea for a business.. "let's get smart people together and invent stuff" and leave all the pesky marketing and sales to someone else.. but that's what business *is*, so you're basically saying you want to be in the business of not being in business.

Re:Ideas

[rishubhav]

What the parent seems to be missing is that as the article points out inspiration often comes from something outside your normal field of study and expertise - a different view of things. That's what this provides by bringing together people who are not just smart, but people who come from a variety of disciplines

Re:Ideas

[FreeUser]

a company by the name of thorium power, is designing a real thorium based fuel that would run in a conventional Russian atomic reactor, and along comes this patent troll company trying to eat up the US thorium reactor patents... which will mean Russia and China may be using thorium reactors while America finds itself unable to because 'the patent troll drove the cost too high'

It serves America right. Currently we believe we can grant ourselves a monopoly on most ideas, business models, and software, and then use our economic, diplomatic, and military muscle to force the rest of the world to eventually adopt laws enshrining such patents into their legal systems, and thereby hard code a medium-term economic dominance over everyone else.

What we didn't count on was George W. Bush draining our economy, diluting our military strength, and devistating our diplomatic influence using our nation to prosecute a pernsonal and family vendetta against the Hussein family.

As a result, we are no longer in a position to dictate our agenda to the rest of the world (this is in most ways a good thing for everybody, including the US, even if we don't know it), and lo and behold! The rest of the world has chosen not to enact business method and software patents, and isn't too keen on granting patents for vague ideas the so-called "inventors" have no intention of actually building. So if that means the rest of the world ends up with cheap, clean power, and the US economy flounders or even impldoes, well, our own greed and lust for dominance brought it upon ourselves, and we deserve it.

And maybe, just maybe, our falling behind every other developed nation in just about every field will be the catalyst we need for real patent and copyright reform. I'm not betting on it--we seem to have developed a talent for burying our heads in the sand--but there is an outside hope such change might eventually happen, someday.

patent troll

[biot]

Developing ideas? Give me a break, they buy patents and sell licenses. It's your basic patent troll outfit.

Slave masters

[dotancohen]

Though we've discussed Myhrvold and his company in the past, the New Yorker focuses more on how incredible it is to have a group of very intelligent people sitting around a table developing ideas. Developing ideas? No, they are not developing ideas. To develop an idea one must nurture it into a product or service that helps humanity. What these people are doing is enslaving ideas. They are taking what could possibly benefit you and I, and encumbering them in chains.

"passive thorium reactor"

[arthurpaliden]

I always thought that a working model was required in order to patent a 'thing'. How can they possibly know that it will work or what other patents are required in order to impliment said patent if all they did was to sit around a table and discuss ideas found in other papers?

Re:That's what we need...

[explosivejared]

Personally, I think you give these guys too much credit. Pimps are the epitome of coolness. Fancy, flamboyant suits, canes, and ostentatious jewelry are great. Plus, pimps are cultural hearths. The language of my generation was pretty much developed entirely by pimps and their siblings, "playas". These guys the article is talking about are more like the white cracker, slavemasters of ideas. In short, they are totally not cool.

You're an optimist ...

[Pinky's Brain]

The chance of people being assholes is wholly uncorrelated with their intelligence. As far as risk/reward/effort goes patent trolling is a better deal than being an engineer in a start up.

They are throwing shit at a wall

[Pinky's Brain]

With 500 pieces of shit some of it will stick in the end ... and unfortunately that's all patent trolls need to turn a profit.

I'm not impressed by "inventors"

[MikeRT]

I saw a post on the blog Technology Liberation Front that pointed out that most of their ideas don't pan out. They just don't even work. You know what many of those "inventors" sound like?

The same sort of person who would fit in well with "social scientists." It's great that you are smart and have ideas, but I could give a shit less about your "ideas" if you cannot make a functioning prototype of them.

Our society should have precious little tolerance for people who only come up with ideas on paper, without being able to put them into practice.

Not so sure about storytellers

[jd]

Some of the finest storytellers of our time - Alan Garner, Isaac Asimov, JRR Tolkien, for example - applied logic and rational thinking to their novels. Carl Sagan's "Contact", based around very sound scientific principles, was highly respectable. 2001 was more "scientific" and realistic than 2010 - name the book (or movie) with the better reputation. Indeed, many famous artists were also scientists, and many famous scientists were also artists.

Clearly, there is a branch of storytelling and artistic creativity which is highly in tune with the scientific method and Socratic thought. Not all, sure, or even necessarily a whole lot, but the two are not exclusive. On the other hand, you are correct in saying that no quality science is conducted in a purely creative sense. "Thought experiments" come the closest, being a form of daydreaming and roleplaying, but they are still more entrenched in rational thought than emotional whim.

Re:I hate these patent farms

[timmarhy]

this is the problem i have with the patent system as well. it doesn't reward people for being productive. drastic change needs to happen

intellectual honey pots

[Quadraginta]

I dunno...patenting an idea which is impossible to implement, such as a perpetual motion machine, or which (more realistically) is wildly unprofitable to implement, isn't any real bar to progress. No one's ever going to implement those ideas, right? So that kind of "business" seems like just a honey pot for impractical dreamers.

Re:intellectual honey pots

[Lonewolf666]

The problem is with ideas that are are easy to think up but hard to implement. Say, the passive thorium reactor mentioned in TFA. The idea of a thorium-based breeder reactor is not new, and the abstract on ScienceDirect reads more like marketing than like science. As in "lots of promises but little about HOW it is done".

If the rest of the "science" article has the quality of the abstract, that particular patent application is a classic example of patents that should be denied for lack of useful contribution.

To prevent this, I think patents should only be granted when an implementation is also described, with the possibility of overturning the patent if the implementation does not actually work.

They are parasites

[HEbGb]

I was going to jump in and describe this company as being a bunch of parasitic patent trolls, who create zero value for the world, but instead suck value from people doing REAL work.

But it looks like plenty of people have already made that point. Excellent!

These people should not be glamorized, they should be roundly criticized for being lowlife parasites.

If they required a working prototype, I'd agree.

[khasim]

But since the patent office will now take "patents" on "a system for ..." that pretty much means that anyone can patent anything and then wait for someone to actually invent the device.

I can patent a perpetual motion machine ... and then claim that a new battery system infringes upon my useless patent. As long as I'm willing to "license" my patent for less than an actual court case would cost, I'll make money.

And I'll hinder REAL innovation and progress.

That's the goal with that company. They aren't improving anything. They're abusing the patent system (with the patent system's willing support) to drain profits from real inventors.

Reminds me of something I wrote a few years ago

[argoff]

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168820&cid=14072468

Bottom line, patents are anti free-market, they are not property, they are not incentive, they are not protection. Rather brought to their logical conclusion they are genocidal.

decadent science

[Goldsmith]

There definitely is value in getting different kinds of scientific people together to talk about specific problems. I've been to some conferences like that, and it's great. ... but I won't patent the hoped for results of the experiments I'd like to do over the next ten years. Most of us in science can't get away with that kind of stuff, we can't afford it financially and we value the respect of our peers too much. Most of us can't afford to put a T. Rex skeleton in our living rooms, or have lawyers around to record our dinner conversations either.

Perspiration

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's the problem with these types - they do the 2% inspiration, but skip the 98% perspiration. If somebody else does the 98%, they sue.

So much for "promoting science and the useful arts..." - ergo, IMHO, unconstitutional.

Misuse of the system

[Chmcginn]

Society is encumbering the ideas. Their paper isn't magic, it gets its meaning from the legal system.

This is true, but the system in place is one that a lot of people feel is necessary to some extent. For the basement developer who comes up with an idea and makes a prototype working weekends in his home workshop, getting a patent for something useful is the end result of years of hard work. But getting a patent for 4 hours of sitting around brainstorming, and coming up with an idea that may not even be possible seems to be a definite abuse of the system.

Right, and here's how to fix it...

[msouth]

Here's a standard that would help fix the kind of behavior which, as you point out, does the opposite of the founding fathers' intention with patents.

When you show up with your idea that you think deserves protection, the patent examiner's first duty is to look at what evidence you provide that this idea has been economically feasible for 20 years, and no one has done it yet.

If it has been feasible for 20 years, then there is a market that could support it, and there are big players in that market, and the lone inventor knows that the minute he puts the idea out there, one of the established players will swoop in, copy it, and laugh at the inventor. The inventor, knowing this, just doesn't bother making it because going through all that work to have someone else come in and cash in on it doesn't make sense (not to most people, I mean).

We know the idea is clever and/or hard to come up with because no one has come up with it for 20 years, even though it has been feasible all this time.

Take the Chip Clip (a wide spring clip used for holding plastic bags of snacks closed after they have been opened to keep the remainder fresh). I have no idea whether it was patented or not, but it deserved patent protection, in my opinion, because it was clear that it had been within the ability of humans to make such a clip 20 years previous. Just no one did it. So we say "ok, it was feasible for 20 years, no one did it, you can have a monopoly on it for the next 20" or whatever the term is.

Now, Amazon's one-click--they just look at that and laugh, and say "sorry buddy, come back and tell us something interesting when the web has been around for 20 years, kthxbye."

Ideas have value, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they patent trolls? Maybe. But ideas do have value, as long as patents have value. Litigation can only happen if patents are being violated, and that is why IP management is so important.

Ideas have value, but what they don't have is natural ownership. By unnaturally imposing ownership on them through patents, the value they have for the community of producers is reduced, while the value they have for legal leeches who produce nothing is increased. And that's a disastrous tradeoff for community.

Re:Well maybe next time you'll think twice...

[YttriumOxide]

Please don't use the word "Muslims" like that... it's tarring all people of one belief with the same brush.

It's probably equally as accurate to say that most Christians who die violently do so at the hands of other Christians. (although I have no cite for this, just as you have no cite for your Troll)

(disclaimer: I'm not a Muslim or a Christian - in fact, I'm a staunch atheist that thinks both the Muslim and Christian faiths are COMPLETELY ridiculous. I just don't like it when people fuel hatred in this manner)

Re:If they required a working prototype, I'd agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty decent track record? When companies who hold thousands of patents agree that the patent system is broken, then there should be general consensus on this point. They've made some improvement on the processing time and quality of review, but we still have too many things that should be unpatentable receiving a patent. The assumption should be against the patent, unless the application is persuasive and complete. Sometimes it seems like they rubberstamp it, letting interested parties fight it out in court.

This story and too many others like it show that the purpose of incentivising real inventions for the eventual benefit of society is not being met.

Patent Office is not run by morons but

[anandsr]

The whole concept of patents is so 1900ish. There was a time when people could create something and then keep it under wraps, and nobody could discover what they were doing under the hood. Mostly because mostly people with the knowledge were not near the devices.

This allowed a lot of ideas to get lost. Patents were specifically designed to prevent this act. But now in 2000 and the internet this idea is totally useless. There will be always people who can reverse engineer to find out how the thing works. So that particular reason for Patents is patently lost.

Now there is another use of patents to allow people to invest into projects that have a very high risk value. Pharmaceutical companies do have these kinds of projects. I would think there is some use of patents for these sort of companies.

But for the rest of the market Patents are an abomination. They should be abolished. Software industry definitely does not need patents. They already can use copyrights, to control their creations.

One thing that the patent office should do is to require a working prototype. No prototype no patent. And the complete plan should be made open.

Re:I hate these patent farms

[eobet]

If I can't invent without being stifled, why should anyone else? How about finding a way, doing the right thing, doing it for humanity?

I mean, if you won't and instead do what you said you would, you're no better than the loathesome trolls and in that case, what do you contribute to society?

Sadly, not many are willing to put in the effort required to do great things, so it becomes even harder for those few who try.

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