Yeah, it would be easier innovate on hard problems, Mr. Myhrvold, if you you weren't trying to strangle startups and small tech firms every chance you get with your Intellectual Ventures.
"His company, Intellectual Ventures, intentionally runs counter to the prevailing trend in Silicon Valley."
By, uh, patent trolling?
O_o
I'm torn. There ought to be some way to compensate researchers for actually solving hard problems (here I'm excluding a lot of poorly-examined software patents which basically claim the whole problem via the obvious solution) yet doesn't involve giving them an exclusive stranglehold on anyone using their work even accidentally.
That's kind of logical too, after all having an idea and writing it up in a patentable form is much less work than following through so while the 'doers' are stuck on their first one the 'patenters' are on their 10th or more.