When you talk about IV, use the name Nathan Myhrvold. Hell, they have a picture of him right there.
One of the best measures we have against Mr. Myhrvold -- given that he seems interested in portraying himself as a public genius of some sort -- is to drag his name through the mud over this. He's not the guy who studied with Stephen Hawking. He's not the guy who wrote the molecular gastronomy tome. He's the very, very rich guy who wants to drag down the entire tech industry to get even richer.
Are you sure we're talking about the same Nathan Myhrvold? Because the Nathan Myhrvold that I know is often referred to as a visionary technology and business leader. (http://www.nathanmyhrvold.com/)
Certainly not the Nathan Myhrvold who is a professional jack-of-all-trades. After leaving Microsoft in 1999, he's been a world barbecue champion, a wildlife photographer, a chef, a contributor to SETI, and a volcano explorer. (http://www.ted.com/speakers/nathan_myhrvold)
You can't possibly be talking about the Nathan Myhrvold who proposed that we pump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere from helium balloons to solve global warming, despite experts saying that it would reverse all the work we've done in the last 30 years to get sulfur dioxide out of the atmosphere. (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0912/20/fzgps.01.html)
Although Google would make an industry outsider think differently, it's pretty much common knowledge within the tech industry that the guy is a complete piece of shit.
Nathan Myhrvold is a hero, bolding hacking the legal system and showing where it's vulnerabilities are so Congress can step in an-- oh who am I kidding he's pretty much the worst. Nathan a proper astroturfing is going to cost you 10% of your revenue, I'm willing to edit this comment in your favor if you want to do this the easy way.
Same guy. He likes to turn up in places like the recent Freakonomics book and the Colbert Report to show off his brilliance. But his actual day job is this nonsense.
From an interview of Nathan Myhrvold on Fareed Zakaria:
Zakaria: How worried are you that the United States is no longer going to be the place that invents the future?
Myhrvold: I'm very worried. Current course and speed --- we're very good at inventing, uh, but we're also undermining our ability to do that in lots of ways.
Why new, open, honest Microsoft is still doing it? Or, judging by this action, may be it's still the same, large company, and openness is just a facade?
Bill Gates and IV chief have very deep relationship. There have been reports of Gates attending brainstorming sessions at IV office to generate patentable ideas. I honestly think IV has managed to sold Gates on the some beautiful vision. Or perhaps its just creating FUD that if you don't join in our patent cartel, others will get you. There are also reports that many IV employees have deeper access at Microsoft. For example, IV employees are regularly invited to otherwise employee-only event that Microsoft Research organizes every year. This is unprecedented level of access considering none public information there. Besides Microsoft is currently on defence and it can use all ammo that IV offers for small "membership" fee of their patent cartel.
Their recent movies really boosted how I felt about them.
After several years (after Vista) of staying far away, I decided to give them a try once more with their Windows 7 phone. Totally abandoned and betrayed on that.
When you write something like this, please, make it clear you are being sarcastic at the start of the paragraph. I almost spilled my coffee over the keyboard.
One of IV's related-but-unrelated companies, Lodsys, sued a ton of developers for using Apple's purchasing API, despite Apple themselves having paid for a license for that patent.
I can't imagine Apple counsel was very happy about that.
Don't count on Apple to take a stand. Apple is no better. They along with Microsoft and Sony funded billions into Rockstar Consortium, inc which stifles innovation through the patent warchest.
Citation needed on Apple beating up on smaller companies by using patents.
If anything Apple's stood in the way of patent trolls and threatened to inject themselves in any lawsuit filed for the Lodsys patent, making it much harder for Lodsys to win or back out.
They've been engaged in a patent war with Samsung, Google, et. al, but this is a whole different game. I'm not saying I approve of this, but they haven't been picking on little companies.
Microsoft, by contrast, is making hundreds of millions in license fees for questionable patents impacting Android devices.
I'm not disputing, as I know nothing about this, but isn't the Apple V Samsung thing very similar to Microsoft V Android? Big companies throwing their weight around? Or is Microsoft hitting small guys?
Microsoft is hitting up a lot of Android vendors for licensing fees. They're not even trying to protect any particular intellectual property. They're just shaking down people for money.
It's Intellectual Ventures that was co-founded by two former senior Microsoft employees that's the worst offender by far.
Those companies that invested in IV probably did it for strategic reasons since barring that they'd probably end up targets.
I have no idea what he's up or why he was head-hunted to lil ol' NZ but an ex-IV guy in a major role in a central funding hub of an entire country's R&D system kind of weirds me out. My conspiracy tendencies are high normally, this takes it to 11. Any comments from a community that might have worked/interacted with him?
How come it is news that Apple invested in an IV fund in the past, but is not investing in this new IV fund, but it is not news that Google invested in an IV fund in the past, but is not investing (as far as we know) in this new IV fund? Or Yahoo? Or Nvidia?
Can someone explain the motivations of the major players here? The posted article references another Reuters article that goes into a little more detail: "Several large tech companies previously invested in IV, which gave them low-cost licenses to IV's vast patent portfolios as well as a portion of royalties IV collected." However, investments like this seem pretty short-sighted, and I would have thought that all players in the tech space would have woken up to the dangers of patent trolls years ago. What explains the continued behavior of Microsoft? Is this just another version of paying off the trolls to make them leave you alone?
> " Is this just another version of paying off the trolls to make them leave you alone?"
That's absolutely what this is. Instead of being on the receiving end of a thousand lawsuits, you 'invest' in IV, which gives you a license to any and all of the patents they have and will acquire for some term after your investment.
It's a further optimization of the 'pay them to go away' method of dealing with patent trolls, as you're not paying each shell company for each patent, you just pay the parent company once.
I understand small companies caving to the demands of patent trolls, because fighting is more costly than they can afford. I like to think I'd have the courage to act differently, but I understand the rationale. But a behemoth like Microsoft or Sony? Why pay up? You hear the mantra all the time: "We do not negotiate with terrorists."
It seems obvious it's worse for them in the long run, and they can afford to play the long game. Maybe I'm being naive about the costs at stake here.
MS and Sony (And Apple) themselves are one part tech companies building salable products, and one part patent trolls. Sum total, the existence of usurious IP laws are, by their management, perceived as at least as beneficial as it is onerous.
Those getting hurt by the trolling, are smaller, potentially innovative, companies without patent war chests. But their hurt is measured in all the things that did not come to market; hence remain unseen, unmarketed, unpaid for, and therefore unable to pay for representation in a political system such as ours.
What Apple wants (And MS and Sony), is to be able to troll others, including former employees, who set up on their own. While preventing others from doing the same to them. Or, even simply have that particular sword hang over anyone who might want to market a product in competition with them, as well as those guys' potential investors.
You hear the mantra all the time: "We do not negotiate with terrorists."
That's the mantra, but if push comes to shove, about everyone negotiates with terrorists. It is good for your negotiation position if it the bad guys believe that you won't negotiate, though.
> But a behemoth like Microsoft or Sony? Why pay up?
When they pay, they are getting rid of the problem and, at the same time, funding the troll that will hit their competition with similar lawsuits, making the competitors' lives more difficult and theirs easier. It's one of the only legal ways to spend money raising the entry barriers to your market.
> "But a behemoth like Microsoft or Sony? Why pay up?"
You don't negotiate with terrorists, because there's no real barrier to entry into terrorism. At its simplest, someone just needs a gun and a lot of nerve. There's no real competition to get a gun, they're fairly inexpensive, and there's no shortage of desperate people for whom such a payment represents the best near-term opportunity.
Patent trolling, however, has significant barriers to profitable pursuit. The only people who can likely get into it are already-wealthy professionals and there's not exactly a huge pool of those people, for whom such a pursuit represents the best near-term opportunity.
So the only people you're likely to 'encourage' are organizations like IV that are already doing it and are the exact same groups you're paying off with 'investments'.
Longer Explanation:
To patent troll you need at least a patent and a patent attorney. But not just any patent will do -- you need one that allows you to assert rights over a fairly broadly-implemented technology, with a sufficiently-early priority date so as to stand up to an inexpensive search for prior art. And, unlike guns, those are currently in high demand, limited supply and there's generally direct competition to acquire them.
Competent patent attorneys aren't exactly growing on trees either. Particularly those who would take on the risk of this kind of business as opposed to pursing other IP work.
Beyond that, you need enough resources to plausibly survive a whole bunch of lawyerly conversations/negotiations with your targets and probably a patent trial or two. Even for the troll, a patent trial represents 1-2 million in fees. [1]
So what you really need are enough patents on fundamental technologies so that the small "licenses" add up faster than the legal/opportunity costs of your attorney(s), and still leave enough money for your own end to be worth-while.
And "enough patents" also implies "enough shell companies" to ensure that each individual suit doesn't carry a downside risk of ending your entire operation. [2]
So now you're looking at escalating attorney's fees for setting up these shells and rents on small offices for each, in a 'friendly' legal district.
Never mind that at any moment the US Supreme Court or Congress could step in and not only zero out your current portfolio's value, but could outright gut your entire business plan. [3]
So, quite unlike with terrorism, you can only really get into patent trolling if you're an already-wealthy professional who (for whatever reason) has no better prospects in a market and industry where basically everyone has better prospects.
The only people for whom it's a particularly plausible option, are those who either lucked into one or more particularly valuable patents, or someone who had already acquired a great number of such patents before the industry really recognized the value of patents in the hands of an NPE.
[1] Even if you partner with the attorney, their opportunity cost would have to be plausibly re-coup-able if they're going to go along with your business instead of just getting other clients. So it's not like the 'cost' can be ignored entirely.
[2] Without shell companies, if someone wins a judgement of attorneys fees, they're going to take your warchest and patent portfolio and you'll be done.
[3] That certainly doesn't seem likely any time soon. But it's a real, non-zero risk of wiping out your whole enterprise.
Biggest players have most to lose from IV. IV in fact must target big players to extract largest sums possible. Big players also often have diverse profitable products making them much more easier target. In return, big players can't sue IV because IV has zero products on market.
IV's business model is this: Hire 30+ full time staff to do nothing but idea generation. They do some proof of concept to show off to journalist in attempt to clean their image as trolls but in reality they have no plans to make any products whatsoever. In addition they have 100s of other people which had previously included some well known researchers and experts to "generate ideas". All of these ideas becomes patent. They also but entire portfolios from other trolls.
So the name of the game is to some how collect 1000s of patents in just few years. That increases your potential target domain. Now you go to actual businesses and demand "protection money" like traditional mafias and gangs used to do. For a much lower "subscription" cost you can avoid multi-million dollar suits.
Another twist in the business plan is that the "member" companies can use IV's portfolio to attack non-members. Imagine Samsung using IV's patents against Google. That increases incentive to become member just because you don't want to be attacked by other members.
Lets not forget that Apple and MS, along with a few others, were responsible for creating the Rockstar Consortium patent troll. This was a further attempt to destroy Google, Samsung, LGE, etc. Companies that they already have attacked directly in the past.
That's the sort of thing that I keep mind whenever I see Microsoft moving in the right direction (eg, by opening their C# compiler). I can't help but liken it to the mob giving some of its extortion money to charity in a bid to show that they're good people.
> While Apple invested in earlier IV funds, its reluctance to do so again may stem from the fact that it is being swamped by trolls itself
It is the wrong reason if you accept that patent trolling is wrong. Analogy: murder is wrong, so if someone only stops murdering people because their own family members were murdered, it would be the wrong reason.
Maybe its the best we can expect of a corporation.
It is also a bit of a guess to be honest, maybe they aren't getting a good return on investment or who knows maybe they just don't feel like investing in them any longer.
Maybe its the best we can expect of a corporation.
Corporations don't make decisions; they don't do anything at all. The people who control them do. "A corporation" isn't even a single abstraction; there are so many different kinds and even the same kind can be set up and run so many different ways that having any expectation (or lack thereof) of "a corporation" is meaningless.
A good result from bad intentions isn't admirable. A war economy can create jobs, among other things, but that result doesn't make going to war an admirable decision.
Corporations don't make decisions; they don't do anything at all.
Nitpick - corporate leadership is responsible for the actions of those they lead.
Everyone knows what we're talking about when someone says "Microsoft did this" or "Y Combinator did that". It's a convenient shorthand that omits no useful information.
Nobody cares about the difference between an LLC and an S Corp and a Nonprofit when discussing corporate behavior (or lack thereof!) - their collective actions can and should still be critically evaluated through the same rubric.
>Corporations don't make decisions; they don't do anything at all. The people who control them do.
The people that take those decisions are many and have various roles. The aggregate of them, we call a "corporation".
Think of it like an emergent entity. It's not just a person (e.g the CEO) making a decision all by himself. It's the whole leadership, the Board of directors, shareholders, the financial and market condition of the company, it's history etc.
In your logic, people don't take decisions and don't do anything either. Their brain does.
murdering is too far outside the norm, in current American society. Paying patent troll is common place for corps. Take something like I don't know, polluting. When are you, or I or anyone going to stop polluting? When the realized benefits, out way the immediate costs.
the real reason is probably that apple is a pattent troll themselves. why would they cross one target (microsoft, and possibly several other microsoft partners) off their list by joining this?
remember that not even patent trolls have tried to enforce design patents as IP before apple. They are really good at trolling. ALso, do not forgot job's emails to the RIM ceo during the valleygate.
I almost never comment on articles unless I've read it completely (although a few days ago I rightfully got downvoted for incorrect comments, partly due to not reading the link) - I'm against hasty judgment in general.
That said, my point still stands. The title does not accurately reflect the content of the article. A more accurate title would be "Apple declines to increase their funding for patent troll Intellectual Ventures"
That title would still be inaccurate because it would imply that Apple is currently funding IV, and will not increase their funding. Just because Apple gave them money in the past doesn't mean they are continuing to fund them either.
It just seems to me that you have difficulty accepting other commenter's criticisms and would rather just believe that you've been right all along. Why is it that many hackers have this superiority complex that causes them act like this? I see this type of scenario in our industry all the time. Hackers would rather see themselves as correct from a different angle rather than accepting fault seen from everyone else's perspective.
The article says nothing about the funding stopping completely, just funding a new round, hence my edit which originally said stop funding, which is incorrect.
I'm not sure what is difficult to understand here about the main point that the title is inaccurate - there wasn't even an attempt to refute the explanation.
Intellectual Ventures (IV) is seeking a major new investment to expand its controversial patent trolling operations but, unlike on past occasions, Apple is not coming along for the ride.
>in February, [Apple] complained that it has had to go to court with trolls 92 times in the last three years.
Yet Apple holds a $1Billion+ judgment on Samsung for violation of Apple's design patent for rectangular device with rounded corners in addition to "pinch and zoom" and "bounce back".
Patent Trolling was defined due to the 'trolls' being "non-practicing entities" -- a fact which obviates cross-licensing, counter-suit and basically any strategy other than the simple math of "license cost" (to comply) vs "legal cost" (to fight).
Trying to conflate a suit between Apple and Samsung with Patent Trolling is to rob the term of all meaning and essentially lump every action under "patents are bad".
Which is certainly as valid an opinion as any.
But such an opinion doesn't make any distinction between practicing entities and trolls, and as such it makes no sense to voice that opinion using a word that exists solely to make such a distinction.
But will_brown didn't say that Apple was patent trolling. It's perfectly reasonable to respond to Apple's reported impatience with one form of patent scumbucketry by pointing out that they're still cheerfully engaging in a somewhat different form of it themselves.
The groups at Apple who engage in patent lawsuits, are highly unlikely to be "practicing" much other than patent litigation. Similarly, if IV started selling statues of Nathan Myhrwold on the web as a new line of business, and hence laying claim to be a "practicing" entity; they would still be trolls.
>Patent Trolling was defined due to the 'trolls' being "non-practicing entities"
Though likely this is the commonly accepted definition, for all practical purposes this very naive definition. Perhaps not the case with Apple and the rectangular design, for purpose of legal protection, most patents are placed into entities that do nothing other than hold and license patents. (e.g. company A files patent 1, then assigns patent 1 to company A1 which in turn licenses it to company A the original inventor). This is elementary protection of intellectual property and legitimate; however, under your definition this makes company A1 a patent troll because the entity is non-practicing and only licenses and protects its patent.
According to the article Apple previously invested in IV patent funds, and those patent funds are non-practicing entities.
Conflating a specific lawsuit does not lump every action as "patents are bad" as I used a specific example based on the merits. And yes I admit it does not fall under your definition of troll, but I will continue to say a company is a troll who files, buys and enforces patents which are essential, obvious, and a copy of prior art already in the stream of commerce.
> "Though likely this is the commonly accepted definition, for all practical purposes this very naive definition. "
No, it's not. It's the actual definition that exists to draw a distinction between the unique situation posed by non-practicing entities and the added extortionate situation NPEs present, completely divorced from any concern as to whether their patents are particularly good, bad or whatever else.
If you want to say Apple has funded patent trolling, that's perfectly fine, because it's true. But that doesn't mean Apple's lawsuits against Samsung -- nor Samsung's against Apple -- are patent trolling.
> "Conflating a specific lawsuit does not lump every action as "patents are bad" as I used a specific example based on the merits."
You can certainly make a point about given actions being more or less conscionable on the merits. But even unconscionable actions simply are not trolling if they're undertaken by practicing entities.
If Apple were to fund IV and an IV subsidiary sues you, that's trolling, arguably by Apple, because you can't sue, threaten, cross-license, etc with Apple directly to make it go away.
If Apple were to sue you directly with the same hypothetical patent, that is not "trolling" because you can bring the typical array of legal strategies to the table.
I think this is factually incorrect, that trolling was used for the tactic of milking patents for financial extortion, separately from the identification of the class of actors known as "non-practicing entities" who, as a class, are known for frequently employing (and being particularly difficult to constrain when they employ) the tactic. But, while the two concepts are related, they aren't identical -- trolling is an action (and trolls are those who engage in that action), while NPEs are a class of entities distinguished independently of their engagement in trolling (despite frequently also engaging in trolling.)
You don't have to be an NPE to be a troll, or vice versa.
One of the best measures we have against Mr. Myhrvold -- given that he seems interested in portraying himself as a public genius of some sort -- is to drag his name through the mud over this. He's not the guy who studied with Stephen Hawking. He's not the guy who wrote the molecular gastronomy tome. He's the very, very rich guy who wants to drag down the entire tech industry to get even richer.