Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Claims Its Layoffs Are Because It's Invented A New Way To Buy Patents
from the a-patent-in-spinning-the-press dept
Times are tough for a patent troll, apparently. A year ago, we noted that Intellectual Ventures -- the world's largest patent troll, who brought in billions of dollars by getting companies to pay up a shakedown fee to avoid lawsuits over its giant portfolio of patents (mostly cast off from universities who couldn't find any other buyers) -- was running out of cash. While IV did convince Microsoft and Sony to dump in some more cash, IV's litigation strategy is in shambles. Various lawsuits are dropping like flies without any of the big wins that IV promised.Meanwhile, while its heavy lobbying may have helped to kill the latest attempts at patent reform, the Supreme Court's big ruling about software patents in Alice v. CLS Bank suggests that many of IV's patents just became worthless.
So it's little surprise at all that the company has just announced that it's laying off 20% of its staff -- likely about 140 employees. But, of course, IV's only real skill has been spinning the tech press into believing whatever bullshit story it's come up with to justify its innovation taxing operations. And thus, with these layoffs, it's right back into spin mode, presenting the most spectacularly ridiculous justification for the layoffs.
Does IV point to its litigation losses? Nope. Does it mention the Alice ruling? Hell no. How about the fact that many of its early backers have now turned into vicious opponents? Not at all. The fact that its in-house inventions have yet to lead to a single viable product on the market? Nope. The reason given? Apparently IV would like you to believe that it needed all those people to invent a new way to buy "ideas" in bulk and now that that's done, they're no longer needed. I'm honestly curious if IV's co-founder Edward Jung said the following out loud without laughing, or if it was just delivered to Bloomberg reporter Ashlee Vance in written form to avoid the risk of guffawing at the pure ridiculousness of it all:
Edward Jung, IV’s co-founder and chief technology officer, insists that the business is doing fine. It’s true, he says, that not as many companies bought into the patent funds as IV expected, but he says the company is happy with its returns.Nice story, but... it's rewriting history. As we've noted, IV just bought up giant patent portfolios in bulk from universities who had rushed to set up tech transfer offices in the wake of the Bayh-Dole Act in the 80s, expecting to get rich from "commercializing" all of the "inventions" that their faculty produced. The reality was that the vast majority of tech transfer offices lost money because none of the patents were worth anything by themselves, and no one wanted to buy them. IV stepped in at the perfect time, allowing tech transfer offices to save themselves the embarrassment of failing to make any money (and actually costing universities tons of money) by selling a boatload of useless patents in bulk, just so IV could run around claiming it held tens of thousands of patents, and demanding big tech companies pay up so that IV didn't have to sift through all those patents to find something (anything!) to sue over.
The layoffs, according to Jung, represent part of the company’s evolution. IV was the first company to try to amass so many patents, and it had to hire hundreds of people to invent the processes for buying ideas in bulk. People were needed to sort through patents, acquire them covertly, think up complementary ideas, and deal with the associated paperwork. “We have more data than anybody and have analyzed it over the years,” Jung says. “Our analysis has allowed us to save a lot of needless paperwork and become more efficient. We don’t need as many people to sift through and sort information now.” Much of the work has been simplified and automated.
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Filed Under: buying ideas, inventions, layoffs, patent troll
Companies: intellectual ventures
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Shareholder lawsuit?
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Re: Shareholder lawsuit?
You cannot proove what they have done wasn't an effectivisation of their process. The reason for not patenting would be business patenting is officially not legal and for business reasons they cannot disclose their business secrets even in court etc. No proof, no lie.
That they are firing is out there. That the Alice-ruling is problematic for their business model and that they are making enemies among earlier investors is also out there.
Listening to the boss spinning the layoffs as a positive thing should not be relevant for rationally thinking investors. Then again, when is investment ever purely rational?
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Re: Shareholder lawsuit?
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Re:
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It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
It made my day to read that pathetic plea, for all you investors to just wait a little longer in the pumpkin patch. The Great Pumpkin's coming; You'll see!
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Re: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
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Re: Re: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Everything is fine at ENRON,
WORLDCOM couldn't be peachier,
Lehman Brothers is doing great, . .
--
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Dear Intellectual Vultures
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Re: Dear Intellectual Vultures
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Buying ideas?
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Re: Buying ideas?
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Standard, free market economics
The price of their product is falling to the marginal cost of production, zero dollars.
Clearly, IV is getting out-competed in a competitive market. This sounds like Capitalism Is Working, shipmate. Arrrr!
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So they lobbied the Patent Clerk ?
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Oh, wait...
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software patents
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Re: software patents
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The reality is that I can earn a living as a software developer, but after many years of doing it, it got a bit boring. IV both pays a bit better and provides a bit more interesting work. It's good to know that I can earn a living as a software developer because obviously this week's news shows that my position at IV is not 100% secure. But software development is definitely Plan B, not Plan A, for me at this point.
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Re: Re: Re: software patents
If you don't have marketable skills (in programming, or lawyering or public relations or whatever) why do you expect a living wage in programming or lawyering or public relations or whatever?
PS
Nobody can "steal" an idea - infringement isn't theft, legally or morally. It's just copying. Copying isn't theft.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: software patents
Tell that to the RIAA. Or MGM. Or Harper Collins. Any artist who gets paid for their limited edition works.
Of course you can steal ideas. And in plenty of cases copying is clearly theft and has always been treated in exactly that way.
And - just to put the cherry on top - my Mac dictionary gives this for the first definition of "infringement": actively break the terms of (a law, agreement, etc.): making an unauthorized copy would infringe copyright.
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I expect a retraction, and a groveling apology from you.
But just to put a cherry on top, "stealing" something involves removing that something from someone's possession. Copying, infringing or not, doesn't remove anything from anyone. Simple logic refutes your propaganda, Dilbert.
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Clearly the Supreme Court has not said that Infringement is not theft. That notion is idiotic. They are saying that some cases do not constitute theft - which is pretty clear. Go ahead - infringe my first amendment rights - it aint theft. No shit Edward.
Since you respect authorities I'll refer to my dictionary again: steal - dishonestly pass off (another person's ideas) as one's own.
You are entitled to your own opinions Edward but not your own facts.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: software patents
My skills as a salesperson, OTOH, I will admit are not quite so marketable.
With that combination of skills and lack thereof, I have found IV to be the best path forward at this stage of life for bringing my own ideas to market. A little known fact about IV is that we do more than just sue people. YMMV.
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Re: software patents
Being a software person myself, I can tell you why, 90% or more of the code in a modern project is in the form of libraries and tools provided by other people. This make it obvious that new ideas build upon and depend on the ideas of other people.
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There is also the problem of MS, Google, Oracle, IBM, etc. having the majority of software patents, not individuals or small companies.
Even copyright is of limited value to most software developers, because most developers work on either SAAS products, embedded systems, or bespoke software (whether as contractors or in-house dev teams).
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Re: software patents
What I'm afraid of is not having Google or Apple or Microsoft use my ideas.
What I'm afraid of is being forbidden from using my ideas.
The amount of damage software patents create, by forbidding software developers from using certain classes of ideas, is much higher than any monetary compensation they could bring. We have seen it happen time and time again, either to us or to someone we know.
And there is also the fact that all software is math (see, for instance, the Church-Turing thesis). The thought of being able to forbid others from using math, either outright denying or requiring a toll, feels very icky to mathematically-minded people (which software developers often are).
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Re: Re: software patents
IMHO the point at which software became patentable was about the time when they stopped calling it 'computer science' and started calling it 'information technology'. Science isn't patentable. Technology is.
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Re: software patents
Why shouldn't software be patentable? Many reasons:
1. It's math. Mathematical Logic, more specifically. Sometimes only one way of doing something exists, so everybody discovers it. Look up how many people discovered continuations.
2. Independent invention. I've written code to answer various test or puzzle questions - I like to solve puzzles. I can't tell you how often my solution is essentially line-for-line identical to the given solution. It's very, very easy to invent the same thing as many other people. Look at the Knuth-Morris-Pratt sorting algorithm as another good, documented example. This would point to obviousness - patentable stuff isn't supposed to be obvious.
3. Software patents just aren't needed to advance the public good. It doesn't take much investment/sunk cost to write software, perhaps unlike things people usually point to as "needing patents", like pharmacological inventions. The purpose of patents is to increase the public good, and we programmers are doing that without the hindrances of patents. They would just be government red tape that's very obviously not needed.
I don't expect you to understand any of these reasons, as your wages depend on you not understanding any of it. If you did understand, your job would probably seem less interesting and less relevant.
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Re: Re: software patents
2) If your solution is identical to what somebody else did it is not patentable because its not novel. If it is obvious it is not patentable. Not a problem. And in particular - not specific to software but rather patenting in general. If you are arguing against patents just do that.
3) Software patents aren't needed to advance the public good. Well, I feel better knowing you've settled that issue and the constitution is wrong. Lots of great inventions of the past with huge importance took little time or money - resting instead on genius or luck of timing.
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Take two computers communicating with a simple function combined between them - one result if A finishes first and a second if B does. But their speed depends on their temperature which varies. And at a particular critical temperature quantum effects become important. So whats the function Edward? Your argument is that the combined computation is mathematical - deterministic. Which requires the quantum universe to be deterministic. I introduced that alternative to you a little while ago as the necessary conclusion for your view - looks like you missed that.
MS word - cop out - MS word is software - tell me its function - literally - you just insisted that it is math so give me the equation to evaluate. I won't hold my breath.
I'm convinced that you have no understanding of side effects, functional programming, determinism, or how to write software.
Really, anybody who wants to insist MS Word is math - literally - is hopelessly naive. Theory is incredibly useful - and incredibly limited - and its dangerous when you don't understand the bounds.
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In your threading example, the temperature becomes an input into the function computed, doesn't it? Control the temperatures, you've got known inputs, and the problem becomes deterministic. That's how all threading bugs get solved. You figure out what inputs you don't account for currently, control them one way or another, and the race condition or other so-called indeterminacy goes away.
MS Word is computing a function, and you'd know that if you understood anything of computability theory. Exactly what function isn't interesting - Word is subject to all the theoretical considerations of computable functions. It's math. That's why I brought in the reference on "Busy Beaver" programs. Go read it, then come back and apologize.
Programming is mathematics, pure and simple. Patenting math is a bad idea, and in fact, not allowed under current laws.
I'm guessing that since you're not a CS teacher, your current salary depends on you not understanding that programming is math, and hence arguing with you further will be pretty futile, but also pretty fun. And revealing, perhaps. Will we find out that you've studied law? Will we find out that you work in the "Intellectual Property" field? Stay tuned for the Next Episode of Deliberate Misunderstanding and find out!
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side effects, functional programming, determinism
...originated in mathematics. Specifically, Turing machines and Church's lambda calculus, both of which are abstract math.
Not to mention big-O notation, recursive formulas, P vs. NP completeness, matrix manipulation, etc. It's like you have no understanding of how much programming depends upon the theories formed by discrete mathematics, linear algebra, or computation theory.
If any of these could be patented, then the software industry would be decades behind where it is now.
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Re: Re: Re: software patents
Please, edward, tell me the function for MS word.
MS Word is not patentable. You can hold a copyright on the software, but not a patent.
If MS Word were patentable, then Open Office would be sued out of existence.
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Re: software patents
That's easy to explain.
1) Software patents harm the entire software industry in a number of ways. (I originally listed a number of those ways, but it was too lengthy for this comment).
2) By the plain reading and intention of patent law, it's nearly impossible to reasonably explain how software even remotely qualifies as a patentable material. It's like patenting an equation.
"Why shouldn't people in software enjoy the same intellectual property protections for their ideas as people in other fields have enjoyed for hundreds of years?"
Because they aren't necessary in the software industry. Perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of patents. Patents don't exist for the benefit of the patent holders. They exist to encourage people to share their inventions with others. Period. Full stop.
The software business doesn't need such an incentive because the inventions aren't being kept a secret. Part of this is financial (software moves so fast that you'll get most of your return on it within 18 months, patent or no patent, so dealing with patents is a time and money expense that is detracting from real work), and part of it is cultural (software engineers have a very strong culture of sharing ideas and approaches -- and this is one of the main reasons that the software industry is progressing at such a mind-boggling rate).
"openly steal his/her idea"
Ideas can't be stolen. Even if they could, ideas by themselves are rarely of much value -- they're a dime a dozen. The execution of the ideas is what counts.
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Re: software patents
Mostly because patents are generally used to BLOCK people from innovating and building great products. It taxes or entirely blocks the production of innovation.
Why shouldn't people in software enjoy the same intellectual property protections for their ideas as people in other fields have enjoyed for hundreds of years?
Some of us find all sorts of patents problematic, not just software. But in software it's often much worse because you're patenting very basic ideas, not specific and complex implementations.
Protecting "ideas" pretends falsely that only you have that idea. Yet when you patent it, you block anyone else who has the same idea from using it, even if they came up with it on their own (or improved upon your idea). Thus, you're blocking people from innovating.
Take a software engineer who has worked hard to develop an idea but lacks the resources to either bring it to market or patent it him/herself.
The great thing about the American financial system is that if you have a truly great idea, it's almost always possible to find partners for funding to bring it to market.
Why should he/she just have to sit idly by while the big players--like Google, Apple, etc--openly steal his/her idea without any kind of compensation?
People make this claim all the time, and yet they offer no evidence of it ever actually happening.
Besides, as we've detailed over and over again, an idea is worth very little without execution. People like you seem to overvalue the idea and don't realize how little the idea matters in the long run.
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It happens every time someone signs a non-compete when they join a big player--or a startup for that matter--like Google or Apple.
IV is the only company I've ever worked for in my career that permits me to do some of my own innovating while on the payroll. Every other company had non-competes that prevented this. Pre-IV, the only times I've been able to innovate have been when I've been between jobs. That's great, but in the long term the bills need to be paid, and I don't necessarily have the sales skills to sell my ideas working completely on my own.
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Re: software patents
The court decision that started the whole software patent mess was wrong: software compiled on a general computing device does not create a new machine and become magically patentable. Does reading a book on General Relativity turn your brain into a new device capable of doing things it could not do before? Would any other General Relativity book written completely differently but teaching you the same thing in the end be infringing?
Name one single medium other than software which has been simultaneously protected by both copyright and patent law at any time in history. A hardware invention could be controlled by specific software. We don't copyright the hardware, but if it is a novel invention we may protect it with patents. Why should we patent the software if copyright already protects it? We could write completely different software to run on the hardware and not violate copyright law, but that would not circumvent any patent on the hardware invention itself.
Should Disney be able to patent Mickey Mouse to prevent others from making any cartoon character depiction of a mouse that talks and wears strange clothes? No, that is what copyright is for and only for that specific character.
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okay,let patent this
Yeah right.
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Patenting layoffs
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But did they patent it
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Sorry, the notion that an act cannot be illegal for more than one reason doesn't pass the sniff test.
Now I'll take an arm core, some memory, dedicated circuitry, and build it into an SOC. Button it up tight. And *tell* you that I've used algorithms that, when implemented in hardware, you Zonker appear to believe should be patentable. Maybe they are done right there in the custom dedicated circuitry that I designed - but I guarantee you I'm using your quantization, motion estimation a crypto algorithms. Or, maybe, I implemented them on in SW on my ARM core. In any case the SOC is locked up tight, no SW comes in from the outside ever.
Your position seems to be that its OK if I used hardware to block me with a patent but not if I used SW. I think that view is unreasonable - the two approaches are used interchangably today. Now, if your view is that neither approach should be patentable that seems like a reasonable opinion to me. But if one and not the other I fail to see how the logic holds up in the real world.
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Side effects originated in math? I would love to hear an explanation of that one. Please, take a crack at it. Math deals in functions which produce results. The definition of a side effect is a value that escapes outside of the function that produces it but is explicitly not a result of the function. So you've got:
Y1=f(x)
Y2 =f(x)
and Y1!=Y2
I'm pretty confident you can code that up but if not let me suggest a global variable. Explain the mathematics of that baby please.
P vs. NP - like much of complexity - relies on logic and reasoning, for example the reduction of one problem to another by considering the various cases. This is not - however - mathematics.
Of course Karl much of software - algorithms to be a bit more precise - relates to math. Who has suggested they do not? The point being made is that the two are not equivalent.
Fortunately - no body is patenting any of those concepts. Nobody. And nobody is suggesting that they can or should be patented.
Oh, by the way, regarding MS Word, Edward has insisted that all software is math and with a functional form. MS Word is software - I did not assert that it could or should be patented but rather that he cannot provide a function that mathematically describes the entirety of MS word. Can you?
Finally, no, Open Office would not be "sued out of existence." People file patent lawsuits to make money. Open Office makes no money. Thats why they don't get sued.
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Engineer, allowed to invent, worked in silicon valley. Still employed at IV.
Thats a small set my friend. Not Ron. Greg wouldn't post. Not Jerry.
Hmmm... I'll have to noodle this in private a bit.
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