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Nathan Myhrvold and the Business Of Invention

Posted by Soulskill on from the ok-let's-run-with-that dept.

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.

9 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Ideas by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Ideas by kesuki · · Score: 5, Informative

      "So how are they making their money? By litigation. So they're not actually helping progress, they're hindering it."

      evidence to this light is found here: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348

      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'

      --
      https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
    2. Re:Ideas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yup. Interestingly, that's exactly what happened with the Wright brothers.

      We think that they invented the world's first aircraft (untrue, but let's not go into that now). They thought their big advance was solving the problem of aircraft control (which they had, but in a cumbersome and essentially dead-end way, with wing warping).

      Did they advertise this for the benefit of humanity, like Santos-Dumont did? No, they patented it and tried to force all aircraft designers to pay them money. Of course, this only worked in the US, so before long France, Britain, Russia and Germany were designing all kinds of aircraft, while development in the US had ceased.

      When WW1 came we had to buy fighters from the French - we had no industry of our own.

      I sometimes laugh at the plaudits offered to the Wrights, when the only thing they really did was SUPRESS American development of aircraft for 15 years.....

  2. patent troll by biot · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  3. Slave masters by dotancohen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  4. Re:That's what we need... by explosivejared · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I got a catholic block.
  5. I hate these patent farms by Awptimus+Prime · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

  6. If they required a working prototype, I'd agree. by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Patent Office is not run by morons but by anandsr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.