I do wonder whether Nathan Myhrvold really believes that patents are a good thing. There seem to be three possibilities:
- Myhrvold really believes that patents make the world a better place.
- Myhrvold is cynically extracting money from a broken system
- Myhrvold wants to bring down the patent system; IV is intended to make the absurdity of the system as blatant as possible, and make money at the same time.
First, I haven't met Nathan personally but from everything I see about him internal to Microsoft (from his time at the company) and his time outside, he is a very, very smart man. And quite rich. I think assigning simple labels like 'good' and 'evil' doesn't quite cut it.
My opinion/guess (with zero inside knowledge) is that Nathan doesn't really care about the patent side of the equation much. He just wants to do interesting ideas and get people in the room to dream up of (and sometimes build) cool stuff. Some of their work around nuclear power is super interesting for example. The patents are just a revenue stream for them to continue doing this.
"Nathan Myhrvold talks about a few of his latest fascinations -- animal photography, archeology, BBQ and generally being an eccentric genius multimillionaire."
- Myhrvold really believes that patents make the world a better place.
- Myhrvold is cynically extracting money from a broken system
- Myhrvold wants to bring down the patent system; IV is intended to make the absurdity of the system as blatant as possible, and make money at the same time.
I hope it's the last one.