Top Microsoft Execs Moonlighting For a Patent Bully 130
theodp writes "TechFlash reports that Microsoft bigwigs like Craig Mundie and Bill Gates (when he still worked there) have been secretly moonlighting at Intellectual Ventures (IV), the 'patent extortion fund' run by Bill's pal Nathan Myhrvold. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed that its technologists have been sitting in on IV-sponsored 'innovation sessions,' where their pearls of wisdom were captured and turned into patent applications for Searete, an IV shadow corporate entity. And if all goes well, Searete will soon enjoy exclusive rights to the fruit of the brainstorming, which includes processes ranging from determining and rewarding 'influencers' to treating malaria, HIV, TB, hepatitis, smallpox, and cancer."
The Crime of Reason (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Reason-Closing-Scientific-Mind/dp/0465005071 [amazon.com]
Patents are genocidial (Score:5, Interesting)
I think its important to understand that as society enters into the coming replication age, that the phony property right they call "patent" will become genocidal.
As things like nanotech and 3d printing take off, production will shift away from the factory and back into the home. The market will start to center around production and creation services instead of production goods.
The people and industries on the losing side of this model will almost certainly try to turn to a patent royalty model, and will almost certainly use extremely coercive measures to impose their control. Just look at Monsanto and ADM and their heavy handed patent strategies used against farmers. Just look at the RIAA and how they cling to their royalty control model under the guise of "intellectual" property and attacked everyone. Just look at the slave plantations, how the plantation masters envisioned that the future of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton-gin and their "ownership" of slaves to vastly expand the size and production capabilities of their plantations. Just look at how pharmaceutical companies sued African nations in the world court to ban them from buying generic AIDS drugs from India. Just look at how patents in the USA slowed anti-lock brakes and air-bags development by decades as millions died.
Mark my words, if we let them push the lie that patent is a "property" or an "incentive" or "protection", genocidal consequences will not be far away.
this the kind of innovation .. (Score:3, Interesting)
'NTP is a holding company [computerworld.com] created in 1992 to manage certain patents belonging to Thomas Campana'
'on 20 May 1991. Campana filed a patent application for his idea to merge existing e-mail systems with radio-frequency wireless [ieee.org] communication networks'
Re:Patents (Score:2, Interesting)
Jealousy of the rich is not entirely unwarranted if the rich didn't play fair in getting that way.
I have a gun, I put it to your head, I shoot, and take away all your money. Then I dispose of your carcass. I am now rich.
Why don't people do this often these days? Because of police, because of a big government with even bigger guns that's willing to stand up and protect you.
Unfortunately, in the grown up business world, there is no such thing, at least, definitely not as strong.
Some big company "murders" you by suing you into oblivion, they get away with it because of how the legal system's set up. If you don't have a lawyer, you're screwed, because unless you're willing to give up everything that's worth living for, there is no way you are going to keep up with the corporate steamroller.
Re:Patents are genocidial (Score:1, Interesting)
Well maybe in your world if you believe in something hard enough it will come true, but the founding fathers knew that copyright and patent were not natural rights, and they expressed that in their writings. That's also why the constitution does not call call them a property right. In fact, the law doesn't even treat them like a property right, that's a propaganda term used to justify them. They were justified for the purpose of incentive, and that's why they have an expiration date too. No natural right would have en expiration date, such a thing with free speech or religion would be silly.