

Nathan Myhrvold: Funding Eureka - cwan
http://hbr.org/2010/03/the-big-idea-funding-eureka/ar/1

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btilly
_My company, Intellectual Ventures, is misunderstood. We have been reviled as
a patent troll—a renegade outfit that buys up patents and then uses them to
hold up innocent companies. What we’re really trying to do is create a capital
market for inventions akin to the venture capital market that supports start-
ups and the private equity market that revitalizes inefficient companies._

Sorry Nathan, your company is not misunderstood. You really are patent trolls
abusing a broken patent system that does more to hurt the software
infrastructure than it does to help it. The best thing that could happen to
our profession is that the Supreme Court could hand down a decision that
renders all software patents invalid in the USA. The grievous harm that would
inflict on your company and business model would just be icing on the cake. We
need fewer parasites on useful work.

Of course you don't agree with me. I bet you still think that Hungarian
notation is a great thing as well.

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rubyrescue
I thought that was Simonyi?

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btilly
Oops, you're right. My bad.

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mattmaroon
I know from experience that most people who follow the software industry have
inflexible opinions about patents and people who sell licenses for them
(which, in turn, requires a legal recourse system for infringement) so I don't
expect his argument to be popular here.

But I think it's important to separate his very valid points from both your
preconceptions of him specifically and the squalid state of our patenting
system, which I think is not irreparable. I'd love to see a liquid market for
inventions, and professional inventors who don't have to worry about the
practical applications and business matters related to their work.

Rock stars don't open stores to sell their own CDs. Painters don't generally
own their own galleries. Why must an inventor be forced to also be an
entrepreneur?

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jwhitlark
I think it all comes down to the damage that patents deal to independent
invention. Painters can't tell you that your painting is a violation and
cannot be sold because you used an arrangement of elements that they had used
before.

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mattmaroon
But that's not a problem with patents in concept, or the people who deal in
them, it's a problem with the implementation of our patent system, which
almost everyone on both sides of the argument agrees needs a drastic overhaul.
If you enforce novelty and non-obviousness properly, that problem disappears.

Also, musicians sue each other over this all the time.

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andrewljohnson
You must be playing devil's advocate here, because you couldn't possibly want
the rights to use an idea to be based on an arbitrary standard, mediated by
technologically illiterate members of the legal profession.

~~~
mattmaroon
Neither. I'd like protection of inventions by solid standards issued by an
enlightened patent office. I realize we're a good way from it now, but don't
want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The problem we have has nothing to do with the legal system, that's just a
symptom. The disease is that patents are poorly researched, issued according
to guidelines as capriciously enforced as the iTunes App Store, and are
therefore frequently rendered toothless in court. They are hoarded by
corporations as little more than weapons to respond to other patents with.
It's sort of an intellectual mutually assured destruction.

The legal system too may need some improvement where it comes to patent
litigation, but it still must exist and be a part. But I think the ideal of a
very good patent system, backed up by enforcement (because otherwise it's
pointless) that is reasonable, fair, and swift, and enhanced by a liquid
market for legitimate patents would spark a wave of innovation perhaps unlike
anything we've ever seen.

On the other hand, it's much easier and more fun (and less disruptive to a
naive, black-and-white worldview) to simply call people patent trolls.

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andrewljohnson
I think this enlightened patent office you are seeking is a mirage. The people
are never going to be disinterested enough, educated enough, or smart enough
to award patents in a reasonable way.

I think the ideal of a very good patent system is great. I'm all for
protecting the little inventor against the evil corporations, but the current
laws have the opposite effect. Moreover, any law grounded in subjectivity,
which is then argued over by spending money in court, can never help the
little guy. As long as having a patent requires having a lawyer, patents offer
no protection to anyone but the uber-rich and large corporations.

If you want to help the common inventor, I think the surest way is to just
abolish patents all together and let people compete. Inventors can still keep
secrets if they so choose.

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rleisti
An invention market for software is complete BS. All the effort involved in
producing a software patent can be summarized as a small amount for the idea,
and most for wordsmithing. The real value comes from the implementation, which
is only loosely connected to the patent; just as the relationship of any
software to its initial specification.

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anamax
> The real value comes from the implementation, which is only loosely
> connected to the patent; just as the relationship of any software to its
> initial specification.

Suppose that I came up with a method for solving traveling salesman in O(N
__2). Do you really believe that the value of a package that uses that method
comes mostly from things other than the method?

Subject to what happens in In Re Bilski, you can patent the application of an
algorithm to a specific problem, subject to novelty and obviousness. And no,
the fact that an algorithm is obviously useful for a given problem does not
trigger the obviousness bar. ("bar" = obstacle to getting a patent.)

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rbanffy
It's not surprising at all seeing a former Microsoft exec abusing the patent
system in order to line up his pockets.

Heck. Even bank-robbing wouldn't surprise me.

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sh1mmer
What does the fact he used to work at Microsoft have to do with anything? I
know plenty of lovely people who have or do work at Microsoft.

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butterfi
That there are nice people at Microsoft is hardly the point. It's naive to
ignore the reputation MCSFT has developed over the years, and Myhrvold was a
senior decision maker at Microsoft. While the original posters hyperbole might
be out of place, the observation that Nathan Myhrvold might be following in
MCSFT's aggressive, sometimes abusive, business practices is completely valid.

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rbanffy
There are nice, clever and ethical people at Microsoft, some of them are very
dear friends of mine. But ignoring the fact that some sub-criminal psychos ran
the company for a large part of its history is remarkably naïve.

