Tech Press Falling For Intellectual Venture's New Spin

from the just-reprint-the-press-release dept

It appears that Intellectual Ventures, the world's largest patent troll, is testing out some new hilarious spin concerning its business of shaking down companies who innovate, getting them to pay huge sums of money to avoid getting sued. And, ridiculously, some in the tech press are falling for it. ZDNet's Rachel King recently wrote about Salesforce.com paying off Intellectual Ventures not to sue it by basically reprinting IV's press release, to the point of describing IV not for what it actually does, but as a company that "invests in and works with investors and technology businesses to drive innovation and invention." Of course, if you know anything about Intellectual Ventures (or, hell, do a Google search) you'd quickly learn that what IV does has nothing to do with driving innovation or invention. It buys up crappy patents that are mostly worthless on their own, bundles them together in a big batch and then tells companies to pay up to (a) avoid getting sued and (b) get in on the deal by letting them use that big batch of patents at times.

The press doesn't need to out and out call IV a troll, which it is, but you'd think that anyone reasonably versed in the space would at least acknowledge the controversy over the company. The idea that it "works with technology businesses to drive innovation" is laughable. It does no such thing. Nothing IV has ever done has helped drive innovation forward. This American Life tried very, very hard to find a single example of Intellectual Ventures actually helping move innovation forward, as opposed to just shaking down companies to get them to pay up, and came up empty. Even the examples IV gave to the reporters from TAL turned out to not live up to their own claims, but rather were more cases of blatant patent trolling: taking highly questionable patents, and getting companies who almost certainly don't infringe, to pay up because it's cheaper than a lawsuit.

To position Salesforce.com's deal as some sort of cheery arrangement that somehow helps Salesforce.com is laughable. Salesforce.com just paid many millions of dollars to basically not be sued. That's many millions of dollars that won't be going into improving its products and services. There's news here, but it's not what's being reported.

Filed Under: innovation, invention, journalism, patents
Companies: intellectual ventures, salesforce.com

Judge Blocks Former Microsoft General Manager From Working For Salesforce

from the noncompetes dept

A few years ago, we covered some of the research on the impact of noncompete agreements on innovative industries. Basically, noncompetes are effectively a form of DRM on human capital. They diminish the pace of innovation in that they get in the way of idea sharing and the free flow of talent to where it can be most effective. Not surprisingly, California refuses to recognize noncompete agreements as enforceable. So, it's a bit strange to see, as pointed out on Slashdot, that a former Microsoft General Manager, Matthew Miszewski, cannot work for Salesforce.com "in a marketing role in salesforce.com's public or commercial sector anywhere in the world." It's that "anywhere in the world" part that has me scratching my head. If Miszewski moved to California, where Salesforce is based, could the Washington court actually do anything? The Slashdot post also points out Microsoft's hypocrisy on this issue, in that it's happy to restrict the "flow of talent" from its own staff, but on immigration always argues about the importance of the free flow of talent to American innovation...

Filed Under: matthew miszewski, noncompetes, working
Companies: microsoft, salesforce.com

Bill Clinton Thinks He Can Ban Twitter, Facebook & Live Blogging From Event [Updated]

from the yeah,-that's-not-going-to-work dept

A couple years ago, we were surprised by reports that former Vice President Al Gore had alerted attendees at an RSA conference where he was set to speak that no press were allowed, and that no one should report on what happened. It appears that his former boss, Bill Clinton, is doing something similar as PR handlers for his keynote at a Salesforce.com event have warned attendees not to report, tweet, Facebook or live blog during the event:

"PLEASE NOTE: President Clinton's representatives have mandated that there be absolutely no reporting during his session. That includes live blogging, Tweeting, Facebook posting or use of any other social media. We understand the inconvenience this may present, but greatly appreciate your compliance. Thank you."

It's difficult to think of a request that is more out of touch with what is happening in the world today. It's quite normal for people to communicate via such social media methods and shutting them off entirely (which won't actually work) just seems petty.

Update: And... the inevitable backing down. Clinton's people now claim that it was all a misunderstanding, and they simply said that the speech would not be open to the press. They claim that the PR agency misinterpreted that to mean no live blogging, tweeting or Facebooking, but they're actually fine with it. Of course, again it makes you wonder why you have such a "no press" policy in the first place...

Filed Under: bill clinton, journalism, live blogging, social media, twitter
Companies: facebook, salesforce.com, twitter

Microsoft Decides It Can't Compete With Salesforce.com; Sues For Patent Infringement Instead

from the must-we-remind-you dept

Remember back when Bill Gates said:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."

Those days are long gone, apparently. In its latest patent litigation action, Microsoft has decided to sue Salesforce.com for infringing on a bunch of patents. Basically, it looks like Microsoft went through its collection of patents to find whatever they could that Salesforce might possibly infringe on. Take a look at the list:

• 7,251,653: Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data
• 5,742,768: System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu
• 5,644,737: Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display
• 6,263,352: Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications
• 6,542,164: Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information
• 6,281,879: Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information (the 164 patent above looks to just be a continuation of this patent)
• 5,845,077: Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer
• 5,941,947: System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network

Amusingly, Microsoft and its super expensive lawyers were apparently in such a rush to file the lawsuit that they put the wrong patent number in on that second to last patent in the filing. Oops. Either way, look over that list of patents and try not to repeatedly shake your head in disbelief at the ridiculously broad nature of each and every one of those patents. And, then, since patent system defenders always remind us that it's the claims that matter, go take a look at the claims and wonder how these patents ever got approved in the first place. Going through that list of patents, you could use them to sue an awful lot of web-based service providers.

Hopefully (though, unlikely), the Supreme Court gets around to issuing its Bilski ruling and puts software patents like these out of their misery. Here's the full filing for anyone interested:

Filed Under: online, patents, software
Companies: microsoft, salesforce.com

Don't Announce You're Open When You Just Blocked Someone Out

from the just-a-suggestion dept

Earlier this week, Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff bashed Microsoft and its new cloud computing initiative, suggesting that it was unfriendly to partners: "They hate everybody and we love everybody, and that's pretty much the difference. We even love Microsoft. ... This is our core strategy, love." While we tend to agree that Microsoft's strategy leaves much to be desired, that doesn't mean that Salesforce's strategy is really all that much better. In response to Benioff's claims that they "love everyone," the CEO of Zoho suggests a less lovey-dovey version of Salesforce.com, noting that Zoho was all set to launch products on Salesforce's own cloud computing platform, Force (formerly AppExchange), when suddenly Salesforce.com blocked Zoho -- mainly because Zoho offers a competing CRM system.

Just a reminder that it's easy to say you're open -- but if you're not really open, someone's going to call you on it.

Filed Under: closed, competition, crm, open
Companies: salesforce.com, zoho