
Intellectual Ventures on This American Life - jacobjulius
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/22/138576167/when-patents-attack
======
reader5000
This is all basically a "stupid tax". We Americans are too stupid to engineer
a reasonable patent system, and the price we pay is cramped innovation and
increased costs. The Myhrvold guy is a parasite, and so are the source of his
$5 billion capital and the ridiculous state of patent law that enables his
behavior. The patents being cranked out by the PTO look like they were written
by a group of 5 year olds with a Markov text generator.

Also this was a great piece of journalism.

~~~
rauljara
>Also this was a great piece of journalism.

I started listening to the This American Life podcast after I heard a piece on
the financial crisis. Their reporting of business matters is truly
extraordinary. Their stories often have a narrative that I think it is
possible to disagree with, but the sheer depth with which they tackle a
subject is amazing, and incredibly informative.

Their non-business related shows are great, too, but very different. If you
liked this piece, check out some of their archived shows. You'll learn a lot.

<http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives>

~~~
erickt
If you weren't aware, the This American Life business team spun off to form
Planet Money, which is also an amazing show:

<http://www.npr.org/blogs/money>

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nextparadigms
_In an email to us, Peter Detkin called the comparison to the mafia
"ridiculous and offensive." Detkin wrote:

"We're a disruptive company that's providing a way for patent-holders to
recognize value that wasn't available before we came on the scene, and we are
making a big impact on the market. That obviously makes people uncomfortable.
But no amount of name-calling changes the fact that ideas have value."_

NO, ideas by themselves are _meaningless_. Take it from a guy who _loves_
coming up with new ideas for products and businesses, but isn't so good at the
execution part (that's me).

Ideas have value only when they are part of a shipping product. The more
popular that product, the more valuable the idea behind it becomes. The sad
truth is that right now there are a lot of patent holders who aren't even
using most or all of their patents, and instead they just use them to make
money off others or sue them.

If patents aren't completely abolished (by far the _best_ outcome for the
world and innovation), you should at least not be allowed to flaunt your
patents unless they are already part of _your_ shipping products. And even in
that case, you should be allowed to license it for only a few short years,
like 3-5 years - not decades.

And ideas should under no circumstance be patentable.

~~~
michaelf
> NO, ideas by themselves are meaningless. Take it from a guy who loves coming
> up with new ideas but isn't so good at the execution part

Maybe off topic, but this reminded me of a certain statement about poetry, by
the poet WH Auden:

    
    
         For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
         In the valley of its making where executives
         Would never want to tamper...

------
thirdsun
I'm really looking forward to this one, but I'd like to say something about
this kind of quality reporting in general:

Being from germany This American Life was off my radar until about a year ago,
but listening to just two episodes instantly got me hooked and turned this
podcast into an essential weekly habit. This kind of investigative reporting
and the ability to tell, structure and plot everyday life experiences are a
pleasure to listen to.

The same applies to the lengthy frontpage reports of The New Yorker - turned
me into a subscriber of the iPad edition. If print businesses follow this
route of intensive and detailed reporting, there will be no need to compete
with the often-complained-about online resources, which may be faster but
often lack the detail and on site journalism a staff like The New Yorker's can
pull off.

~~~
voidfiles
I also am a fan, but you are wrong about the New Yorker, and TAL being
competitive. I too thought that such good news has to be worth a lot, buy as
it turns out they don't make money.

The New Yorker is basically philanthropy. According to the comments of more
then a few journalists, the guy who owns the new Yorker doesn't care if it
makes money, or even if it looses some money because he just wants to be the
guy that owns the New Yorker.

I think that what it comes down too is that not enough people like news like
this.

Another problem is that its hard for something like TAL to do all the news.
There needs to be more local, and regional shows like TAL to get useful
coverage.

That being said I am glad to know that so many people like good journalism, it
means at least there is a hope that it will pull through.

~~~
kahirsch
> The New Yorker is basically philanthropy. According to the comments of more
> then a few journalists, the guy who owns the new Yorker doesn't care if it
> makes money, or even if it looses some money because he just wants to be the
> guy that owns the New Yorker.

That sounds more like Harper's, which is run by John R. MacArthur, the same
family as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which gives
MacArthur "Genius" grants and is the "more just, peaceful, and verdant"
sponsor of NPR.

------
texel
This is just fantastic- great reporting, and in my opinion it would elicit the
appropriate degree of moral outrage in most reasonable listeners. I hope this
kind of exposure is at least somewhat helpful at raising people's awareness
outside of the software industry echo chamber.

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rokhayakebe
These guys are nothing less than pirates. If they were so true about helping
the patent owners, they would simply have an agreement with them to be the
middle man and take a percentage of the revenue generated. But no, they
actually buy the patent (and I am sure for pennies on the dollar) and license
it to more companies for top dollars or sue them out of existence.

~~~
olefoo
They cold call patent owners actually.

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NHQ
If you missed it and don't want to wait until sunday to download, go to
another TAL episode page like [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/218/a...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/218/act-v), open yr browser's javascript console (cmnd-
option-j) and type playMe('441&promo=0')

~~~
dot
wow, thanks! very clever. this type of thing probably works in a lot of
places.

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wallflower
To be fair to Nathan Myhrvold, Intellectual Ventures is not his only interest.
He is an intellectual goad.

Read this epic thread about him sponsoring a trip to elBulli for FatGuy,
founder of eGullet

[http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/138044-my-last-
an...](http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/138044-my-last-and-anyones-
best-shot-at-elbulli/)

~~~
d2
From the thread (Nathan's comments). Seems like a real asshole:

 _snip_

OK, so now I have to keep FG honest by relating two of his classic comments
during the meal.

We were all mesmerized by the black truffle series. After the braised/raw
endive dish (which arrive in transparent packages "en papillote"), there was a
pause in the conversation. FG broke the silence with a profound observation "I
think that the black truffle really helped that dish".

Reallly? The endive wasn't enough by itself? The rest of us didn't know
whether to laugh, or quietly tell the server to stop pouring him wine.

But the classic of the whole evening is when we went back out on the terrace
to have petit fours. Thierry Rataureau turnes to FG and says "So, Steven what
do you think?" It was Thierry's first time at elBulli and he was contemplating
the meal.

FG, who had noticed how little light there was on the terrace turned and said
"I think I'm going to need flash".

That's the kind of deep culinary insight that we've all come to expect from
him

A great time was had by all of it - it was a great group, and a great meal. It
is also the end of a era, which made us all a bit sad, but also happy that we
had been there to partake in it.

~~~
wallflower
When I spent an hour reading (and salivating on) the whole thread, the context
I got was Nathan ribbing his friend Steven A. Shaw a.k.a. "Fat Guy" by
highlighting a few instances where he did not appear to be the fearless
founder of one of the best food/cooking communities on the web.

"Ferran Adria is going to ascend to the ultimate expression of the culinary
arts: he's going to become a food blogger. Actually he's going to become more
like Nathan M.: head of a kitchen lab and creator of dishes, without a
restaurant."

-FatGuy

~~~
ecuzzillo
Relatedly, Myhrvold did actually make a really genuinely huge contribution to
cuisine with his gigantic ubercookbook Modernist Cuisine, and so it makes me
sad that he turns out to be a bloodsucking asshole by trade.

~~~
tptacek
Didn't Myrhrvold have a _spectacular_ amount of money prior to founding IV?
"Complete T-Rex skeletons in my foyer" money?

I don't like IV, but I feel like Myrhrvold probably does believe in what he's
doing.

~~~
georgemcbay
He may actually believe he's doing the world a great service, but surely you
don't believe that just because someone is fantastically wealthy relative to
the average person means they automatically stop doing things for the money?

At some point it becomes more like watching your Hacker News karma go up than
it has to do with having a real impact in your life, but that doesn't mean the
wealthy stop caring about it.

In other words... well, sure Myrhvold is wealthy... but he's not Helú, Gates
or Buffet wealthy. He's just a chump compared to _those_ guys.

------
tzs
I was looking forward to this, based on the number of people here talking
about the great reporting, but now that I'm listening on the radio I'm a bit
disappointed. They are talking about patents overlapping other patents, but it
is clear that they are just going by the _titles_ of the patents and maybe a
quick glance at the abstract.

Unfortunately, the title and abstract just tell you the general area of the
patent, not the details, and it is the details that matter. You'd expect to
see many patents with similar titles, and even similar abstracts, even though
the patents might be covering things that are very very different.

~~~
scott_s
Finally listening to it myself. I think they're talking about titles because
that's the easiest way to get the ideas across to the listeners. It's not just
the reporters who think that all of these patents are for the same thing, it's
the guy who analyzes such things as his job.

------
chrisbennet
When I first read the title I thoght it said "Intellectual Vultures"

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enjalot
I get so enraged when hearing these stories. It is no different from
extortion, and now I hear that you can be sued for libel for calling it that?
I wrote a blog post the last time there was an HN thread on this calling to
action: [http://enja.org/2011/07/09/the-software-patent-racket-
what-d...](http://enja.org/2011/07/09/the-software-patent-racket-what-do-we-
do/)

I'd love feedback and ideas

------
Balanced
A slanted journalistic piece that doesn't tell the other side-- in particular,
the inventor. Instead of finding one, the article says they found it extremely
difficult. (Surely, the news broadcasters can find some inventor's view.)
Where's the other side of the story?

The only ones it found were inventors who said they couldn't understand the
dumb legal language of the claims, and thus, said all was stupid. Obviously,
someone is stupid, and the news team could have found many inventors who did
understand the language. Why is such slanted journalistic article seen as
having truthful?

If the other side isn't presented, I'm always suspicious whether the story has
integrity rather than sensationalism.

------
zach
Good stuff. I had some long-form thoughts so I posted a full-length reply on
my blog:

<http://zachbaker.com/revenge-of-the-futurists>

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kevinchen
According to IV:

> Imagine an inventor out there — someone with a brilliant idea, a
> breakthrough. This inventor has a patent, but companies are stealing his
> idea. And this inventor doesn't have the money or legal savvy to stop them.
> That's where IV comes in. It buys this inventor's patent, and it makes sure
> that companies who are using the idea pay for it.

What a bunch of bullshit. They're not helping any inventors. Their overly
broad "orange juice" patents make it impossible to do anything without
violating one of them.

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bumbledraven
I've always felt the words "intellectual" and "property" should never be that
close together for any reason. (With apologies to Jerry Seinfeld)

~~~
tzs
The economic theory behind IP law is to legally imbue intellectual works with
those attributes of real goods so as to make them have the properties that are
necessary to have the free market deal with them, so calling it "intellectual
property" is sensible and accurate.

------
pkulak
So is this airing tomorrow? If so, I can't wait. I won't read it now though.
I'm all about the podcasts.

~~~
petedoyle
"mp3 available Sunday 7pm"

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/441/w...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack)

------
Balanced
A slanted journalistic piece that doesn't tell the other side-- in particular,
the inventor. Instead of finding one, the article says they can't. (Surely,
the news broadcasters can find some inventor's view.) Where's the other side
of the story?

If the other side isn't presented, I'm always suspicious whether the story has
integrity.

~~~
bergie
I think the inventors can't speak about their dealings with IV because of
contractual reasons. Or maybe they're just ashamed to have sold their patents
to a troll.

------
robtoo
direct mp3 link:
[http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashous...](http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/441.mp3)

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petegrif
Great piece.

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CamperBob
Wow... when I saw the headline, I naturally expected yet another puff piece
extolling the genius of Nathan Myhrvold to all who will listen. NPR gets some
serious kudos for proving me wrong.

~~~
scott_s
This American Life is an amazing program. And so is Planet Money! Planet Money
people doing a piece for This American Life is amazing-squared.

~~~
boucher
Planet Money is actually a co-production of This American Life and NPR, and
there's often a lot of overlap (for example, they devoted a full TAL episode
to Toxie, a story that was developed over several episodes of the Planet Money
podcast).

~~~
hammock
So it's more like amazing^1.5 ?

~~~
boucher
It can still be amazing squared :). This American Life is actually one of my
favorite things. I always look forward to new episodes, and love going through
old ones in their iPhone app.

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shareme
If you read the full text Oasis Research has the same exact Texas office
address as Lodsys and Oasis Research has Certificate of Interested parties
listing IV as getting a portion of Oasis Research revenue.

If Lodsys is the patent trollester collecting IV revenue through a Certificate
of Interested parties back deal with IV that might explain how methodical
Apple is moving to decimate Lodsys/IV..

sounds like we are being had by IV...whereas they license a patent than turn
around sell patent to a party where they take aback-end deal percentage of
revenue and that new company than sues for patent infringement the same
companies that licensed said patent with IV..for me that is cleary somewhat
fraud..

~~~
tptacek
What's fraudulent about that?

