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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.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Developing ideas? Give me a break, they buy patents and sell licenses. It's your basic patent troll outfit.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
An idea pimp!
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?
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Patentable Subject Matter. Assuming the criteria described in the next section are also satisfied, any new and useful process, machine, manufac- ture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement of these things, can be patented. These cate- gories are quite broad, but the courts have identified certain types of subject matter that cannot be patented, including laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.
(from Can You Patent That?")
Please help metamoderate.
Played by patent proponents, it's a useless distinction which holds no information. Empty words and misdirection.
"the New Yorker focuses more on how incredible it is to have a group of very intelligent people sitting around a table developing ideas."
Hey, maybe the place where they THINK could be called a TANK. I can't believe no one's thought of this before!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
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 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.
English majors who write on scientific matters for laymen seem to delight in such unexpected phenomena as near-simultaneous discovery and invention by geniuses working independently.
At least one researcher has come up with a more prosaic explanation for the coincidental telephone patent filings - he believes that Bell bribed a patent office employee to show him Gray's filing, after which Bell returned to his lab, completely revised his approach, and soon re-filed with a description of his triumphant "invention".
This strikes me as entirely believable. I've learned that even among highly educated engineers, there are pathological liars who have no qualms about taking credit for excellent work done by others, if they think they can get away with it. Think of it as the engineering version of "Bosnian sniper fire". And don't believe everything you see on a resume.
Oh, I see, these are good patents not evil patents. Yes...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
While this shit may sound good for some of you, I recently began doing research on a project to build water transportation using alternative energy.
Well guess what? One guy ownes ALL rights to the most common sense approaches, yet refuses to bring his product to market. Prior to my investigation, all my 'original' ideas have already been thought of , registered, and accepted. The only way I could move forward would be to pay someone who didn't do anything to help my work some money for every sale. That is, if he'd even respond to inquiries.
It gave me an edge for the future. If the system is going to be bound by such things, I am going to register every stupid thing I come across that hasn't been registered yet. If I can't invent without being stifled, why should anyone else?
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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
I can patent a perpetual motion machine
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.
And don't forget, this is the Nathan Myhrvold who asserted (while working for Microsoft) that Microsoft deserved a cut of every transaction made over the internet.
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.
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.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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."
Liberty uber alles.
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.
Apparently you're under the impression that the Patent Office is run by morons.
Fair enough, you're entitled to whatever POV you like. But there's no way to argue logically with you, since your assumptions are so fantastically different from mine.
FWIW, I assume the PTO is run by pretty clever people who do the best they can, given the general difficulty with predicting the future, and who have a pretty decent -- albeit not perfect -- track record over the past 200 years, and who would normally see right through any such transparently bogus scam, and, since they're human beings exercising judgment, and not Pentium Core Duos executing a giant Perl script written by Congress, would use the discretion the law gives them to just deny such an application forthwith.
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)
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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.
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.
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