World's leading patent troll sues Motorola over Android phones

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/worlds-leading-patent-troll-sues-motorola.ars

by bryanlarsen • 15 years ago

83 30 15 years ago

Could it be just a coincidence that IV is run by a former Microsoft executive? I'm thinking it isn't. This way Microsoft stays "clean", and Google/Motorola can't sue IV back or threaten them with their patents since it's not even a real company.

bjg• 15 years ago

I wish I could reach out of my computer and slap you.

Disclaimer: I am employed by MS, in an unrelated area.

coderdude• 15 years ago

Probably not some kind of corporate conspiracy. It's sad that so many people seem to agree with you. It shows a lack of critical thinking. I'm sure we'd all like to believe in these underground corporate black-ops schemes but they're just fun to imagine, they're not reality.

nitrogen2• 15 years ago

The Halloween Documents of yore would suggest otherwise (http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/). There were also many telling e-mails revealed in the Comes v. Iowa legislation (http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2007021720...), particularly the ones regarding evangelism.

You don't have to have a deliberate "conspiracy" (a word that often seems used to dismiss reasonable explanations of events) to have people with power using their influence to get other people with power to do things for their benefit (like file proxy lawsuits a la SCO). Their past behavior is in line with nextparadigms's comment.

muhfuhkuh• 15 years ago

So, Microsoft's thoroughly confirmed connection to Baystar who invested in SCO group while they were embroiled in an IP lawsuit against IBM about Linux technology is "not reality" either?

wladimir• 15 years ago

How can you say that in general? Dirty tricks do happen. It is naive to assume everything is squeaky clean. I also think it is disingenuous to use the word conspiracy here, as if he made some tinfoil hat statement.

vogonj2• 15 years ago

IV is funded by Google, among others.

"Intellectual Ventures was founded in 2000 by Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung of Microsoft as a private partnership. It lists Peter Detkin of Intel, and Gregory Gorder of Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based law firm as co-founders. They reportedly have raised over $5 billion from many large companies including Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Apple, Google, SAP, Nvidia and eBay, plus investment firms such as Charles River Ventures. Reported statistics indicate over 30,000 purchased patents and applications[3] and over 2000 internally-developed inventions. Licenses to patents are obtained through investment and royalties.[4]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures#Reference...

You're as sound in your logic as saying that because IV was founded by the author of Modernist Cuisine, it's obvious that the molecular gastronomy movement is responsible for Google's patent troubles.

wanorris• 15 years ago

Microsoft may well be completely uninvolved, but while the molecular gastronomy movement lacks any motive for involvement, the same cannot be said for Microsoft.

nitrogen2• 15 years ago

AIUI, licensees of the IV portfolio are listed "investors," so it's not actually the case that IV is "funded" by Google. Google's more of a customer.

10100110102• 15 years ago

Microsoft and IV are sleazy in similar ways, but I don't know that IV is actually Microsoft's handmaiden. It seems unlikely, given IV's investors.

andrewpi• 15 years ago

Since Google has a license to the IV portfolio, would Motorola be covered by that license if the sale to Google goes through?

singh2• 15 years ago

Don't want to sidetrack from the main conversation, but Nathan Myhrvold seems to have a very impressive past [1]. He studied QFT under Stephen Hawking at Cambridge.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold

raganwald• 15 years ago

Indeed! He does have an impressive and admirable past.

bryanlarsen• 15 years ago

Parts of his present are still impressive, perhaps even admirable: http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/...

Now if he'd just dissolve IV and concentrate on the cooking...

joelhaus• 15 years ago

Charlie Rose interviewed Myrvold in 1996: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7896274730082503348 [lots of internet predictions/discussion]. It's truly fascinating how much the world has changed and how much things are the same... (half-way through, but hoping to catch him contradict himself on patents.)

P.S. Here are some other interviews he has done with Rose over the years:

1998.02: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/5101 [on Terraserver]

1998.06: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/4849 [on Microsoft]

2004: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1186228177272865169 [first IV interview]

2010: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11022 [on IV]

2011: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11562 [Book Tour]

phillmv• 15 years ago

That's the incredible thing.

By all accounts he's remarkably accomplished and intelligent. To make everything worse, he's already impossibly rich. It's as if he's decided to just make the world a worse place because he can.

singh2• 15 years ago

I do not know the man well enough to pass any judgement on him. But, your statement [1] raised a question in my mind: On the wiki page, there is an outline of his plan to eliminate global warming through geoengineering. I assume this will cost a lot of money. What if he is trying to build up his wealth so that one day he can fund a massive geoengineering project to help the earth's climate? He has demonstrated the desire at least.

[1] " It's as if he's decided to just make the world a worse place because he can."

feb• 15 years ago

Google is not the first one who funded IV and gets sued. Xilinx had the same experience. http://gametimeip.com/2011/09/07/xilinx-lawsuit-reveals-more...

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

Patent-a-geddon continues apace. That Intellectual Ventures (IV) is revealed to be a patent litigation engine is not surprising to folks who have followed the careers of folks like Nathan Mhyrvold. Back in 1998 the company I was with turned down money they offered because, regardless of their pitch, too much rested on their staying benign vs this. It didn't help that I had come off a really sour experience at Sun where I had tried to negotiate a right to implement the RSA patent in Java and at the last second RSADSI pulled a fast one and rewrote key parts of the contract which changed it into a license for their software (of no value to the Java effort).

Patents are chum in the business world, and they attract sharks.

That being said the cognitive dissonance of the loop here (Google -> MMI <- IV <- Google) suggests to me a complete breakdown of sanity.

serge2k• 15 years ago

Why are you even allowed to sell patents?

If they are there to protect inventors and allow profit from invention why can you sell them? If you fail to commercialize a product from an invention then the patent protection on it should be dropped. A company that buys a patent didn't invent, didn't innovate. Why should they get protection for someone elses work?

jwcacces• 15 years ago

Because sometimes you have a really good idea, and the ability to make it on a small scale, but you need help getting it perfect and making it big.

In such a case, it's often advantageous to join up with someone else, get investments, start a company, and sell your patents to that company.

That's just one way the ability to sell patents is a good thing.

kenjackson• 15 years ago

You have to write some relatively complex law to prohibit it.

For example, Google bought Motorola Mobility -- do they get those patents? What if they then spin off everything, but the patents? Can they do that? Whom do the patents stay with? Can I sell you my company, but not the patents? As an employee, when I grant my employer my patents, have I sold them? Etc...

World's leading patent troll sues Motorola over Android phones

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