Nathan Myhrvold: Funding Eureka | Hacker News Reader

Nathan Myhrvold: Funding Eureka

hbr.org

20 pointscwan18 comments

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.

I thought that was Simonyi?

Oops, you're right. My bad.

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?

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.

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.

The conceptual problem with patents is that they grant an artificial monopoly on something, just like copyright does. That's a distortion of the free market, so if you believe in free markets, a priori they shouldn't be allowed.

To argue otherwise, you will need to show that a practical system can be created that will do enough good to outweigh the artificial monopolies created.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Rock stars have to sing the music they write and work hard for a following until they're valuable enough to get a deal. Painters, no matter how good they are, need to relentlessly network and self-promote if they want their work to be recognized.

Simple creation is never enough. You need to bring forth value, and that means hard work.

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.

> 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(N2). 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.)

And of course software patents are renowned for their unoriginality or obviousness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com