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Intellectual Ventures' Patent Protection Racket
David Gerard writes "Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures doesn't sue people over patents, because that would be patent trolling! No, instead they just threaten to sell the patent to a known litigious patent troll. So that's all right then. Timothy Lee details how using patents to crush profitable innovation works in practice, and concludes: 'In thinking about how to reform the patent system, a good yardstick would be to look for policy changes that would tend to put Myhrvold and his firm out of business.'"
I wrote that text and it was passed unaltered, so blame me for the pissed-off tone.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The order of importance:
Government workers > Lawyers > corporations > citizens
Which is still a poor point, as per your own example, 22+ years expired between the creation and the popularization of the invention. Even under modern patent law with a 20 year monopoly, the patent STILL would have expired before the could recoup the R&D costs.
The purpose of IP isn't to secure the long term viability of corporations, it is to give a short term market advantage to invetors in exchange for the knowledge to become part of the public domain. The goal at the end of the day is to increase the size of the public domain, not the pocket book.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The Supreme Court's review of Bilski is the first time since 1981 that they've decided to look at the patentability of software. The Supreme Court needs facts, studies, and opinions (but only if they're
from very respected people, which includes Timothy B. Lee). You can help gather and document these things on the public swpat.org wiki:
This is our big chance to fix the problem!
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki