Intellectual Ventures Sheds At Least Part of Its "Patent Troll" Reputation

pacopico writes Intellectual Ventures, the world's most infamous patent troll, has changed its tune — maybe. According to a story in Businessweek, the company has started turning a number of its ideas into products, ranging from hydration sensors to waterless washing machines and self-healing concrete. The story reveals some new tidbits about IV, including that it pays inventors $17,000 per idea, has a new start-up fund and that one of its cofounders got tossed out of school for hacking. IV is obvisouly trying to improve its reputation, but plenty of skeptics remain who think this is just a ruse meant to draw attention away from its patent lawsuits.

Re:The only lesson to learn from this

[i kan reed]

What it matters is that it gets done. Patents exist for a limited time frame. Now there's a lot of economic harm that can happen in that time frame, but the hypothetical argument is that the long-term consequences of new ideas fostered by patents are positive.

Are they actually beneficial? I'm as skeptical as anyone about it, and don't know how you'd even begin to measure it.
But patent trolls being forced to design and build things? That is an undeniable situational improvement over the status quo.

Re:In defense of Patent Trolls

[Skarjak]

I don't see how that changes anything. As far as i'm concerned, if you go to one of these patent trolls instead of trying to develop a product, you are indeed slowing down innovation. If a company independently has the same idea and actually tries to do something with it, I don't think they should owe you anything. How exactly did the original "inventor" contribute to society and technology? There is no valuable function being served here. Just someone who came up with an idea, and rather than doing something with it, figures he's just gonna leech money from people who have the same idea later on.