Malaria is no excuse for patent trolling, Mr. Myhrvold | Hacker News Reader

Malaria is no excuse for patent trolling, Mr. Myhrvold

gigaom.com

154 pointswglb32 comments

This reminds me of violent criminals who 'find faith' while imprisoned, except in this case the criminal isn't even behind bars. He's out in public harming people while claiming to do good like some sort of modern Robin Hood except the people he's stealing from aren't villains and his Merry Men are all patent lawyers.

It's funny, too - I've heard from people who work for IV doing medical research and such, and they don't understand the hate IV gets in the tech press. They really don't realize that their company has a tech patent trolling wing.

He's a 21st century Al Capone. Through perverse incentives set by the government, he immorally amasses a whole bunch of money at great expense to society, then attempts to allocate some of it to win the favor of the general public.

With Capone it was soup kitchens and coal, with Myhrvold it's polio research and mosquito killers.

Thankfully Myhrvold uses the courts instead of thugs; though in one sense that's even worse, because at least the government was actively trying to thwart Capone. Who knows how long this patent mess will go on, and how much economic damage will result.

Through perverse incentives set by the government, he immorally amasses a whole bunch of money at great expense to society, then attempts to allocate some of it to win the favor of the general public.

I guess he learned that trick from Bill Gates.

At least Gates' business satisfied some customer needs. Myhrvold's business is forcing other businesses to pay up through abuse of legal system.

No, he learned it from Paul Allen.

Heh, after that first sentence I definitely didn't expect that this would turn out to be a rather thought provoking and insightful comment. Thank you fro the contribution!

It is amazing how Myrhvold can fool so many people with this bullshit of "we created a mosquito killer laser gun that will fight malaria in poor countries".

Most of places with endemic malaria don't even have eletricity. Mosquito nets are efficient enough and much cheaper. Sanitation and draining of dirty water works even when people are not sleeping.

But, still, the guy keeps fooling people with his pretended good intentions. He is a master P.R.

He's not so much a master of PR as someone who is defined as our better, so he gets free, unquestioning (for the most part...) publicity for whatever thoughts he throws out. People like him, unless they are revealed to be involved in moral turpitude or actual crime, receive credibility a priori.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/better[noun]

From the GeekWire article:

"You know, I was at a conference recently where someone said, “Well, do you feel good about what you’re doing?” I turned to this person who is an entrepreneur at a prominent social networking website, and I said, “OK, fine. You’re about people sending little messages to each other and having fun on a social network. How big is your malaria project?” …is Zynga doing God’s work? Is Facebook doing God’s work?"

Nothing quite as rich as sanctimonious shit from a rich scatologist

Not to overstate the value and power of Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga, but FB and Twitter, along with Skype, have played a very significant role in coordinating and communicating between parties engaged in both the Arab Spring (and ongoing) protests and revolutions, as well as the Occupy and Tea Party movements in the US.

The US State Department has funded numerous projects to enable and facilitate URL sharing and communications particularly within China and other totalitarian regimes, employing channels including social and gaming platforms to both popularize and piggyback these tools.

So, yes, social media can, even if it pains me somewhat to say it on both atheistic and privacy grounds, do God's work.

Great. Now I want to replicate the moskito-killer-frickin'-laser-beam anonymously and "sell it for free"¹.

My dream for global good, including pissing Mr. Myhrvold off.

¹ Reverse Nigerian Scam : « Hi, I'm no king, did not win the lottery, don't need you to transfer funds for me with 20% reward. What I need, though, is your address to send you a bunch of frickin' laser beam to keep you and your folks safe from malaria. »

It does seem unnecessarily roundabout, at least. If we really do want to essentially impose a tax on business and use it to pay for malaria research, it'd be simpler to just vote in an actual tax, rather than doing it indirectly via litigation.

Politically untenable. The US political landscape is so fragile and dysfunctional nowadays that there exists no viable candidate nor incumbent capable of proposing such a tax.

Are you saying the U.S. is no longer a democracy?

Well it's a federal republic, which includes a kind of democracy. However, my point is not about being a democracy or not, but about the political economy in the US and the roles courage and strategy have in it.

Actually, as noted in comments above, it's Bill Gates paying for the malaria research.

It's hard to comprehend how can anyone take Nathan Myhrvold's statements as serious. His whole business is built on the patent racket. Intellectual Ventures produce nothing, help nothing, and do nothing, except filling Nathan Myhrvold pockets. Well, they also serve as lackeys to Apple and Microsoft in their patent wars against competitors, but that just only makes them worse anyway.

Interesting. Billy gets Nate to do his dirty work.

There is a reason why they are doing this. MS and Apple want to get away from the MAD patent balance, so trolls are eager to help:

http://www.project-disco.org/intellectual-property/loose-nuk...

Who's to say that we won't see them patent trolling against malaria-fighting companies in a couple years?

The original interview is actually an interesting read: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/feisty-nathan-myhrvold-defends-...

"If what you’re doing to help the world is you’re working for a Internet company that is a non-profit in the sense that it makes no profit but has a multi-billion-dollar market cap or is trying to, and you’re infringing lots of patents and so you have this attitude about patents, what on Earth are you doing that’s good for the world?"

Disregarding patents is good for the world, I would reply.

Patent Troll doing good. Has there ever been a greater Oxymoron?

That greedy, glory-hunting toolbag should be out lobbying to abolish patents, not own them all (software, at least.)

From here - http://intellectualventureslab.com/?p=568

Who funded the work and how much have you invested in these inventions?

This area of research is an example of an Intellectual Ventures program called Sponsored Invention. In Sponsored Invention, an outside sponsor picks the particular problems they want addressed and pays us to come up with the inventions. The sponsor gets a license to the inventions, but we can also license them to others. For these Malaria related projects, our sponsor is Bill Gates.

So it isn't as though they decided one day to go out and fight malaria. It is a commission.

[edit] Also, looking at all the pictures of their "photonic fence", they seem to have neglected the fact that mosquitoes have been found at heights of over 1000 feet, so they might just fly over it.

Flagged. "Patent troll" is empty name calling. Describe problems with a particular patent or go away.

I don't really follow these things and even I know IV was behind the Lodsys "click to buy full version" bullshit patent. Also their entire business model is to be a NPE, so your flagging is quite invalid.

The article does mention Etsy. There's even a link to a research report on the workings of IV.

No. (blows raspberry)

Besides, the adjective 'patent troll' has very little to do with the veracity of individual patents. Patents can be perfectly sound, but still be subject to trolling. Trolling is generally the activity of treating patents as a stock portfolio of licensable monopolies, without an intention of undertaking the risk of actual production, and this seems to describe the majority (but not all) of the behavior of I.V. rather well.

This bastard is THE patent troll. If he's not a patent troll then I don't know who is.

A patent troll is what is referred to legally as a non-practicing entity: A corporation that owns and enforces patents without producing any products or services using those patents.

It's not an insult--it's actually a descriptive term in this context (albeit one with strong negative connotations).

It is an insult. "Troll" is a content free emotional word. Non-practicing entity is likewise a useless name.

If somebody wants to inform me, they had better say something like "claim 4 of the '387 patent is for accepting coins with a vending machine, which clearly is anticipated by the prior art".

Saying "oh noes, evil patent troll" does not inform me. It is sensationalism and gets flagged as the garbage it is.

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