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Comment by ballooney | Hacker News Reader

Lest anyone be taken in by this:

Myhrvold, and his outfit Intellectual Ventures, was/is one of the most egregious patent trolls of the lot. Their business model relies on victims being scared off and settling out of court. Courts, and IV's harassment targets, are beginning to become wise to this and their claims are being taken to court and thrown out - effectively breaking IV's business model. This has all been chronicled ad nauseam on HN. So perhaps, realizing this, we're now getting a flurry of puff-pieces to re-write the story ahead of them having to figure out how to make an honest living.

No amount of PR lipstick should redeem this particular pig.

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Indeed. It prompts one to wonder how many Economist "executive seminars" and "innovation summits" IV have attended and/or sponsored...

In the author Renton's possible defense, he seems mostly to be a food writer. Perhaps no regular tech writer could schedule an interview?

Nathan doesn't want to be approached by tech writers because he knows he'll get bludgeoned by them.

He was on ABC's "Nightline" eight years ago, and he sharply pivoted when his "slice of life" story turned into a softball question about the nature of his real business: Patent trolling. I'll see if I can't find a video of it.

But they do paint thick with that lipstick, so you barely notice how he claims to have invented embrace-extend-extinguish, or his boasting of killing off Netscape.

While what IV has done/is doing is detestable, I think its kind of cool that an individual inventor can simply sell them an idea for money. This may have been the original idea behind IV, but they probably failed to generate any sales revenue without resorting to lawsuits. I do believe that once you hire lawyers, their focus will be to keep themselves employed and find somebody to sue.

From the article:

"Myhrvold and Microsoft are rank hypocrites, one inventor who has sold patents to them told me. (He declined to be named.) His point was that Microsoft in its tiger years complained about the dead hand of intellectual-property law, and the costly enforcement process, but now it acquires and exploits patents to protect its monopolies."

Not sure what point you're making. I read the article too.

At least one inventor doesn't seem thrilled with the result of selling them his patents.

Okay, I don't understand the point of highlighting something without explaining why. Could you explain what role that data point plays given that they hold over 90,000 patents?

The article touches on this. I think it's an interesting article. Regardless of what you think of IV's business practices, Myhrvold has had a fascinating life.

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