Ask Nathan Myhrvold What You Will, Live Q&A April 3 124
He was the CTO at Microsoft, is an accomplished nature and wildlife photographer, and his cookbook Modernist Cuisine won a James Beard award, but Nathan Myhrvold is probably best known for being co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures. In 2009 the company launched a prototyping and research laboratory called Intellectual Ventures Lab. The lab has hired many prominent scientists to work on a variety of inventions including safer nuclear reactor designs and vaccine research. Under Myhrvold's direction Intellectual Ventures has purchased 40,000 patents and applications and internally developed over 2000 inventions, but not without controversy. Nathan has agreed to take some time to answer your questions but please limit yourself to one question per post. As a bonus on Wed. April 3, Nathan will be doing a live Q&A from 12-12:30pm PDT.
Is the money worth it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the money made in patent trolling worth being that kind of scumbag?
Is the Patent System broken? (Score:5, Interesting)
Relationship to Oasis Research and Lodsys? (Score:5, Interesting)
Chris Crawford Substitute? (Score:5, Interesting)
Did the US Switch to First-to-File Affect You? (Score:5, Interesting)
When will it end? (Score:5, Interesting)
Example of benefit to individual inventors? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you present examples of how IV has helped individual inventors to get revenue from their inventions? Please include specific names, specific inventions, approximate revenue seen by the inventor, and current status of the invention-related product(s) and ownership of the patent(s).
science of cooking food (Score:5, Interesting)
What's it like being "evil"? (Score:5, Interesting)
From working at big bad Microsoft to founding a patent-focused lab, you seem like an ideal person to answer a question I've had for a while: What's it like working in companies that are constantly under attack from those who try to claim a moral high ground?
To clarify, I don't mean to imply that you are evil, or that Microsoft or Intellectual Ventures are harming society, but rather I recognize that such accusations are common, regardless of truth. On the one hand, I don't assume that the FOSS fanatics (including myself at times) are always right about how bad Microsoft is, or the free-IP crowd is always right about how patents are crushing us, but at the same time I find it hard to believe they're always wrong, too. I'm curious what kind of moral dilemmas you encounter in this respect, if any, and what insight you might be able to provide as to life on the receiving end of the activists' assaults.
Results (Score:4, Interesting)
Philanthropic work (Score:4, Interesting)
As you've already made your fortune, I'm curious as to why you choose to get involved in controversial patent licensing, rather than, say, Bill Gates style philanthropic work ?
question for Dr. Myhrvold (Score:5, Interesting)
(Have been lurking on Slashdot for 14 years, but it was a chance to ask Dr. Myhrvold a question that motivated creating an account).
Re:Is the Patent System broken? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nathan Myhvold will be our guest and it would be bad manners to ask rude questions – so let us see if we can modify this question – because asking hard questions is fine.
Do you feel that the patent system is broken? If so, how would you change it?
It has been suggested that different industries patents should be valid for different periods of time. For example, drugs should have a longer time period because of the lengthy testing and approval process. What do you think the optimal time for a software patent should be?
Can anybody think of a better, more specific question than that?
Re:what are the differences from the past? (Score:5, Interesting)
Those patents were for making things and scope was well defined.
First, the newer set of patents tend to be for ideas and business processes and are not well defined and tend to be broad. I forget the details, but somebody has a patent for transmitting images over a network which in theory covers almost every moving image on the internet – and this was not for a specific method, code, or algorithm of doing so – just the general idea.
Second, devices are getting more complex and interrelated. A cell phone needs patents covering data transmission, networking protocols, digital camera, OS, etc. Throw on top of that design patents (look and feel) and it is a real mess.