Intellectual Ventures Sheds At Least Part of Its "Patent Troll" Reputation 75
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.
The only lesson to learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that punishing patent trolls causes innovation.
Re:The only lesson to learn from this (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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We don't! We don't know anything! A court of law can establish it if it's ever relevant.
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Yes, they are. There are companies pouring billions into different research so something will pan out and they can make money.
As someone who has had an idea stolen, and implemented ti a big success, by a large financial istution I may be biased. OTOH, had I got paid I would have been able to fund my lab and quit working.
"But patent trolls being forced to design and build things? "
which is wrong. The inventor of the LASER did not have the tools or money to build the first laser. It would have not been techni
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Quick question. Which of my questions were you answering?
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Ok, easy answer. You don't HAVE to build anything. But if you don't you have to at least make your patent available for licensing to someone who will. If you go too long without doing either you risk losing the patent. (you do get to appeal the loss of the patent, if there are special circumstances that delayed you doing something with it) Rather than patent trolls waiting to sue someone we should have patent houses with open catalogs that anyone can browse and buy licenses. Actually, I was tempted to say
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That's what IV does.
They license their patents.
And sue. They do both. So we've come full circle.
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Yeah. When my college physics professor in 1999 gets paid more than $1 of his $150 book sold at the college bookstore, per copy sold, I will feel for these intellectual property hogging bloddsucker management firms. Until then they can all go fuck themselves.
Why even sign that piece of trash? (Score:2)
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If you want your textbook to sell to more than just YOUR captive students (where you can require a certain text) then it is going to be from a major publisher or it isn't going to sell any copies.
If this is true, I'd like to look at the evidence. Have professors written about having trouble convincing other professors to use their self-published textbooks?
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It would surprise me greatly if these lazy shitheads can do anything that is not handed to them by a corporate rep.
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Educators are notoriously exploited, and not lazy at all.
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Because that's what these intellectual property hogging punks made him do. That's what they always do. They are not in the 50/50 let's share business, but in the we can throw anyone a bone and they should kiss our asses for it business. These punk are in the business of collecting ideas, buying them for a measly price, then relicensing it at a huge price, and make profit. Money makes the world go round, for them, it's their money at the expense of everyone else around them. That's life. It's like, if I have
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Sounds like a tiny bit of advertising budget is being deployed here.
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another lesson is that one who starts suing for patent infringement and than builds stuff with that money is apparently equivalent to somebody that build things and sues when somebody infringes on the relevant patents.
Madness?
This is PATENTS!!!
I don't buy it (Score:1)
With the recent Supreme Court rulings, IV's gameplay of suing software companies got a whole lot less profitable. If they want to stay in business they actually need to make things.
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Long time no see :)
(btw, I was watching Linux crash on a friend's PC the other day. Looks like it's still a PIECE OF SHIT)
You must be from IV, here to troll us in another way.
This is not new information (Score:5, Informative)
When This American Life did its expose on Intellectual Ventures' activities a few years ago, IV talked about their labs and made many claims that the money was being used to fund innovation and create new products - a claim that did not stand up to even a modicum of scrutiny.
Basically IV is just trying to find a new patsy to listen to its same old song. Welcome to the show, Business Week!
Waterless washing machines (Score:2)
Are they using unwet water?
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they might use some solvent besides water. ooo, I had a stroke of marketing genius, we could call it "Dry Cleaning"
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
Dryel (Score:2)
Mosquito laser (Score:5, Insightful)
So can I get a laser mosquito blaster [intellectualventures.com] in time for my next party?
Mosquito laser (Score:1)
So can I get a laser mosquito blaster [intellectualventures.com] [intellectualventures.com] in time for my next party?
I logged in for the first time in ages specifically to upvote this, but I don't have any points.
Intellectual Vultures? (Score:5, Funny)
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Seriously, why don't they just change their name to Intellectual Vultures? I'd at least respect them for their honesty.
If they were honest, would they operate this kind of business?
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If they were honest, would they operate this kind of business?
Honesty has nothing to do with it. That's the way the patent system/IP laws are structured.
17K buys your soul (Score:2)
Go ahead sell them your idea's this isn't a publicity stunt to try and mend their reputation so they can aquire more arms in the IP cold war
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If I had an idea for something that was okay, not earth changing, but it was in a field I wasn't an expert in (or was just too boring to bother), I'd happily take $17k from anyone who would hand it to me. I got I think $800 from my employer for my patent, which was obviously what I agreed to when I was hired but puts $17k in perspective.
Something I think conservatives know well, but other leanings don't always grasp, is that it's a good thing to take money from your opponents. That's why I don't buy from
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They see the writing on the wall and want to avoid classification as trolls in case anti-troll legislation gets passed in the future. Doing the bare minimum to utilize a small part of their portfolio is just a minor cost to keep their racket running.
If IV make products, where are these products? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article mentioned a handful of startups but there is no mention of any of these startups actually producing a product that people can buy. If you actually could buy a product or service from an Intellectual Ventures backed company this would be a powerful affirmation that IV is a real contributor and not just a troll.
That this PR piece makes no mention of such a product, making it very clear this has not happened. I expect this will never happened. IV startups are not meant to produce and sell product. They are meant to be bought out and bought out for a much larger sum than IV could get from just licensing the IP.
Now, there is nothing wrong with a startup selling out before it can bring it's product to market but it is a little bit dishonest to plan it that way.
Which, I suppose is an improvement over IV's normal policy of simply sitting on technology until a practicing entity re-invents it and then suing them. Still, it is a long way from showing that the world is better with Intellectual Ventures than without them.
Obvisouly! (Score:1)
IV is obvisouly trying to improve its reputation
Well, yeah... it's really obvisou they're trying to get people to stop dwelling on their patnte lawstuis.
Dhu!
THere still isn't any reason (Score:2)
I ahve heard that having an idea, patenting, and then wanting people to pay you for your idea is wrong, and no data sows it actually hurts innovation.
Patent troll used to be someone who patented something already in use, but not patented and then demanding payment.
Now if I invent something, but can't afford to get a working copy going within some vague period of time, suddenly I'm a patent troll, and that is bullshit.
The industry has taken patent troll, and twisted it in order to make things harder for smal
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Patent trolls aren't small inventors. They are groups of rich people hiding behind paper corporations. They buy their patents from others. Then they do nothing with them. They only sue those who later come up with the same idea. The whole point of the patent system was to act as an incentive for people to come up with, make use of and ultimately publicize their ideas. This was to keep technology progressing to benefit us all. The whole point of a patent troll is to extract money from people who actually t
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Right now, every time a company comes up with a cool new invention, they have to sear
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Interesting idea though could create situations where a potential licensee may come along and be faced with potentially bolstering a patent that could be free for them to use in a few months if they don't. Not sure how big an issue that really is, nor is it clear that it couldn't be trivially bypassed.
Several related companies could easily license each other's patents in exchange for licensing eachother's patents just to keep them current. Even if you tried to proect against that, it would always be a situa
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That's an issue that exists in all time-limited systems, though. It's currently hard to license a patent that will expire in a few months. The trick is setting the expiration time long enough that there's an incentive for the licensee to license rather than running down the clock but short enough that
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Admittedly I am still skeptical it wouldn't be gamed cheaper than actually prioducing the result intended, but I like where you are going with that idea, it reminds me alot of the xkcd commentary on automated spam: http://xkcd.com/810/ [xkcd.com]
That said, I think I have more faith in people's ability to reverse engineer, and lose control of secrets than I do in the ability of a system to regulate. At the current technology level, I really do suspect that any patent system will be more hamper than helper, and giving p
In defense of Patent Trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
I know patent trolls are about as popular here as child molesters, but here I am, coming to their defense..,
Suppose you are the inventor of something marvelous, like say, intermittent windshield wipers. You are not likely to have the capital to start your own car company, so how do you monetize your invention? You do the obvious: approach the existing car companies about licensing. Now, if you don't happen to know the story of Rober Kearns, you may want to look him up, but the TL;DR version is that if you are not ready to spend years and $MILLIONS in court, the giants will just steam roll right over you, taking your invention with them.
Enter the "patent troll".
Patent trolls are your key to monetizing your invention. They have the expertise and the money to see a court case through. They are not producers themselves so the multi-nationals can't shut them down using their own patent portfolios. If the patent is a good one, they stand a real chance of winning in court and they compete against each other for such opportunities, so they form an alternative market where your invention can fetch you a tidy sum. They will expect a discount obviously; they assume a substantial risk, after all, due to the uncertain nature of litigation.
The facts that patent trolls don't invent anything and don't make anything are often held up here on Slashdot as reasons to deride these companies. These are red herrings. Many companies exist which perform valuable functions in society without doing either of these things. Patent trolls are among them.
I will grant that there have been some absurd patent cases ltigated by patent trolls, but that's a separate issue. If anybody's reputation should suffer for these absurdities, it should be the patent office's. The troll is just doing its duty by its investors to run a profitable company by obtaining maximum value for its patent assests.
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I should note that the above argument is about "patent trolls" in general. I don't know the particulars about Intellectual Ventures.
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Re:In defense of Patent Trolls (Score:4, Interesting)
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Interesting. Have you done any licensing deals (as inventor or licensee) with IV? I have. At the time, it was $10,000 per invention filed. Oh, and 15% of the gross revenue for any license fees they receive for that patent (or, if a group of patents, like 100, you get 15% of 1/100th of the total licensing fee paid)
So far, of the few I've gotten with IV (started doing some work with them back in 2008, in areas outside my normal area of expertise), one has been licensed and I do get a nice annual check fro
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How many of those who are paying license fees or settlements to intellectual ventures for your patent (and indirectly paying you) had read your patent before infringing on it? If they hadn't, how does you and intellectual ventures being paid help society or speed up innvoation in any way? If it were me receiving money from intellectual ventures, I would feel pretty bad about it.
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To the best of my knowledge, not a single person infringed on the patent. About 90% of the revenue that IV makes is not from suing for infringement - but from licensing out blocks of existing IP (solutions) to companies interested in certain sectors. My one licensed patent was in energy storage, and was licensed with a few hundred other patents in alternative energy solutions - presumably by someone interested in working in that industry.
Personally, I feel great about that patent. I was given the resourc
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It should be noted that, at least from what I can gather, most of IV's revenue isn't from actual lawsuits. A vast bulk of it is from "license fees" (in the billions of dollars apparently) they grant to companies for using "their technology". Given, they probably illicit those fees via threats of lawsuits. The company had a peak of 700 employees (I think its down into the 500 range now) with revenues close to a $1 Billion a year, and few if any real products to show for it.
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Do yuo have a source for that? I thought inellectual ventures got most of its income by suing (either directly or indirectly through another company) and scaring the other side into an expensive settlement followed by license payments from then on. It's not like a warehouse where people come looking for neat ideas.
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Theres no one source for the information, but below are a few links to some of it. They have apparently made about $6 Billion in revenue since their inception and in 2010 at least they made $700 Million in licensing fees. I did include their "investments" along with what I could call "licensing fees" because they seem to be effectively the same thing. A good chunk of their revenue is via "Patent Funds" where they offer companies a chance to join in to buy a block of patents, apparently with a thinly veil
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Thansk for the well-researched reply. The sources all back up your numbers (though the cnet one was very long). But one thing that isn't clear to me is what fraction of that licensing income that come as a result of a lawsuit or settlement, and what fraction was voluntary. As I said, I thought htat most people who paid licensing fees to Intellectual Ventures did so because they were sued.
I agree that much of the investment in their patent pool could count as licensing fees, since people join it for fear of
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Their patents aren't 'patent for intermittent windshield wipers' complete with schematics. Their patents are for 'device, method, or process to remove liquids from a surface which may or may not need to be glass in a manner TBD'.
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At the same time as you're selling your patent to a patent troll, I'm in the process of starting up a company based on my own invention, "continuous transparent wipers". Soon the wipers are selling like hot butter, and we think we might just pull this off. But then, out of the blue, my small company is hit by a lawsuit from the same patent extortionist you dealt with. In fact, they are using the very patent you sold them to sue us. They threaten to take us to court, and though we never even heard of your in
IV needs an IV(as in intravenous) (Score:1)
This is less of an attempt by Intellectual Ventures to shed the "patent troll" label and more of an attempt to get some money after the big boys refuse to pay them for their shenanigans. As noted by BusinessWeek and others, they had their second round of layoffs in less than a year:
http://www.businessweek.com/ar... [businessweek.com]
So they're flailing a bit to try and generate a second revenue stream. I guess VCs are handing out more money than the courts.