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Beware the King of the Patent Trolls
superapecommando writes "If you haven't heard of Intellectual Ventures, you may want to check this out. Set up by ex-Microsoftie Nathan Myhrvold, with investments from Microsoft among others, it is basically a patenting machine – filing and buying them in huge quantities. Note that it doesn't actually use these patents – except to threaten people with. In other words, Intellectual Ventures is a patent troll – or, rather the King of the Patent Trolls. So I was interested to come across this extremely positive blog post on the company. That it is so positive is hardly surprising, since the blog is called 'Tangible IP,' and subtitled 'ipVA's blog on adding value through intellectual property.' Nonetheless, it provides valuable insights into the mindset of fans of intellectual monopolies. Here's what it says about Intellectual Ventures: 'They are an invention house, and have adopted and reinvented leading edge patent strategies to create a portfolio of their own IP which, in its own, would be of high high worth.' They don't invent anything in the proper, deep sense of the word; they merely file and buy patents – with no intent of ever making stuff or solving real-life problems."
There's a middle ground between 'every idea or work of art is free' and 'we've patented inspirating oxygenated air through an orifice, now pay up.' And no, it is NOT how capitalism works, it is how government granted monopolies work, that's about as far from real capitalism as you can get. As intellectual property is imaginary, made up by people using legislation, not the free market, for OUR benefit, not the inventor's, WE get to decide what's acceptable and what's not.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How about something more along the lines of:
If I invent something, I should be free to parlay that IP into as much profit as I want to, through whatever means suit me (including selling to an IP house), within some reasonable timeframe.
Similarly, if I buy somebody else's invention (as an IP house), I should have the ability to control that IP to protect my investment for some reasonable period of time, and so long as I can prove I am actively working to realize value from that IP and I'm not just sitting on it in order to stifle innovation.
Better?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
The question I have is how many of these things are down to earth inventions, and how many are just academic ideas that they just decided to patent? When I say academic idea, I mean something along the lines of "Hrm, an observer model would be good for notifying an application about a change in a sensor". Even if nobody had done it before, does that make it an invention that should be patentable? And what about the delineation between method and implementation? You can increase the power band of a car engine by using variable valve timing. Should that in and of itself be patentable? What about the specific method that uses oil under pressure to laterally move the camshaft along a threaded "valley" to alter the timing (Basically Honda's V-Tech)? One is an idea/concept, and the other is an implementation. IMHO, an idea is useless without a specific implementation, and ideas should not be patentable. The problem with this, is that most of the software patents I've seen patent the idea, not the implementation. Now sure, with software the line between idea and implementation is much finer, but that's more of an argument towards the patent-ability of software in general, not what constitutes an implementation...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Nathan Myhrvold is a friend of Bill Gates. They wrote a book together, The Road Ahead.
It seems to me that abusiveness is their business. They feel they have to be against something to make money. They scrupulously avoid doing something positive.
The book was an example of that. It was amazing. It seemed as though several editors went through the book carefully and removed any information that might be of interest. I say that because I don't think anyone could write a rough draft of such a long book that was entirely free of anything useful.