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Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures hides lawsuits via 1000+ shell companies
- rubyrescue 17y agoGood side project - shellcompanyfinder.com - up/downvote companies as potential shells, share information as to their true owner.
- sireat 17y agoI was starting to complain that the site is dead, then realized this is still an idea and a worthwhile one! Hope, someone(with thick skin, imagine what you will be going against) actually goes forth with it.
- rdtsc 17y agoWell you obviously need to make a shell company then before starting ;-)
- fnid2 17y agoI could build this in a weekend. No, really. Who is in? I'm in. Someone comes with me I'll go, but I have no interest in a lone wolf initiative. I need a designer who knows HTML/CSS and someone who can help get the word out. I'll do all the programming, database design, security, and hosting. Optimally, I'd like at least 3 people to be involved including myself. If two people, who are serious, decide to come along by midnight tonight, we'll post a link to review the site Monday morning. Edit: The project has been started, see this post to contribute to a discussion about what the site will do. I have a data model there as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1135508 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1135508
- DTrejo 17y agobuy the domain name fast! :)
- fnid2 17y agoOkay, I now own shellcompanyfinder.com
- rubyrescue 17y agoohh this is fun, i just bought it too (intending to donate it to the effort) and godaddy said the purchase was successful... wonder what will happen now... update: The following domain name has failed to be registered: SHELLCOMPANYFINDER.COM Error: SHELLCOMPANYFINDER.COM: cannot register - already registered
- fnid2 17y agoInteresting! I have always wondered what happened in cases like this. The godaddy checkout process is so long and tedious, by the time you actually pay, someone else could have gone through the process somewhere else. In this case, I used godaddy too.
- jyu 17y agoIf people don't upvote/downvote, you could always pay a few bucks to get mTurkers to do it :)
- Sukotto 17y agoOr just make it a stackexchange site (I kid! don't hurt me)
- hendler 17y agoThat has been patented within the last 24 hours by IV.
- sireat 17y agoI remember reading a glowing profile a few years ago on Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures(I believe it was on Wired), how they got together a bunch of big scientists and came up with cool new ideas (and then patented them, but that seemed fair to me at the time). Seems that was just good PR back then, or possibly Mr. Myhrvold started out the business on the best of the intentions... till the cold hard reality of being able to make money by just sitting back, exploiting the broken patent system and extorting raised its appeal. Has IV actually been responsible for something good? I do not ask this sarcastically(almost), what good deeds have they done?
- jcl 17y agoI don't know if this qualifies, but there was an article about a mosquito-killing invention a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516916 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516916
- sketerpot 17y agoThey're working on traveling wave reactors, a particularly slick kind of fast-neutron breeder reactor: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=tr10&id=22114 http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=special...
- troystribling 17y agoBill Gates mentioned this in his TED talk http://ufuk.posterous.com/news-alert-bill-gates-is-officially-redeemed http://ufuk.posterous.com/news-alert-bill-gates-is-officiall.... Doesn't he have an affiliation with IV?
- Psyonic 17y agoIn Gladwell's article it says Gates is an investor.
- qohen 17y agoThe "glowing profile" you mention may have been this 2008 article in the New Yorker, by Malcolm Gladwell: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_...
- akadien 17y agoIANAL, so can somebody explain how this isn't considered racketeering (you pay IV for their promise not to sue you)?
- tedunangst 17y agoRacketeering is collecting money to not commit a crime. IV suing you would not be a criminal act.
- aristus 17y agoRacketeering is the extortion of money under the threat of illegal violence: arson, injury, blackmail, etc. The payer has done nothing to harm the payee. Patent trolling is the extortion of money under the threat of a legal action over a wrong done by the payer (ie, infringed on a patent). If you hit me with your car, I can choose to sue your insurance company (you've paid them to take legal responsibility), or I can choose to accept a negotiated settlement from them.
- FlorinAndrei 17y agoRight, so then the definition of racketeering is starting to become inadequate, is the way I see it.
- patrickgzill 17y agoIt is not racketeering, which concerns illegal behavior outside the law, but more closely resembles barratry, which is the use of the law to harass. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry
- frederickcook 17y agoI'm sure I'll get a backlash here for supporting this guy, but the system he publicly advocates would be a much better functioning patent system than the current one. Currently, the average lawsuit between a large and small company over an IP dispute is around $1.6M. The result is that only large companies can play the patent game, and will simply infringe on smaller companies. If IV can level the playing field by aggregating these patents and taking on that lawsuit risk, that should theoretically reduce the likelihood (or at least the cost) of an IP lawsuit, making the system more efficient.
- jackfoxy 17y agoThat's also the starting cost of a lawsuit between a big company and another big company. We are currently not moving forward with some development our customers are requesting because of a ludicrous patent held by a subsidary of a large company.
- ash 17y ago$1.6M for the lawsuit? Is it just a payment to lawyers? Why so expensive?
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agothrow this guy in jail for the rest of his life and be done with it. no different than madoff. worse actually. he not only took money, but he also "took" knowledge + intellectual property.
- dskhatri 17y agoThat's pretty harsh and unobjective! I haven't read anything to suggest patent trolling is equivalent to a Ponzi-scheme. Furthermore, give the man benefit of the doubt. For a person who did a Post Doc with Stephen Hawking, it's difficult to believe he is absolutely lacking in ethics and morals.
- mbrubeck 17y agoAccording to the article, I.V. demands cash "for a combined promise not to sue over those patents and (here's the sneaky bit) a bit of a pyramid scheme, where those in early supposedly get a cut of later deals." I'm not sure that being smart and accomplished in science is a reliable predictor of ethics or morals.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoyup, that's what i based it off of (being objective). It's also similar enough that he takes money from the big companies THEN goes back to sue them. I don't think it's being harsh either. I'm absolutely against throwing people in jail for dumb things that don't deserve the time. If we don't do something about patent trolls like this, things will continue to get even worse. Being smart (studying under hawking) != having good morals.
- gridspy 17y agoHe sounds more like someone with a "If I can do it under the law, it must be perfectly moral to do it" sort of personality.
- Shmulkey 17y ago
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- noonespecial 17y agoTheir business practices were always dubious. The fact that they feel the need to hide them in this fashion says all there is to be said.
- pixcavator 17y agoNo more than a speculation. Try to follow the links...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- cabalamat 17y agoAnother reason we need the Pirate Party.
- DaniFong 17y agoThis highlights one of the problems with the current patent system that I illustrate in my recent essay: How Law Shapes the Business Landscape, and a Patent Puzzle. http://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-business-landscape-and-a-patent-puzzle/ http://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-busine... Corporations with no assets and no technological liabilities can acquire patents and use them as weapons for extortion. There is no counterbalancing force. These corporations may be created and dissolved at will for an exploitative purpose: they need not ever invent, produce, or otherwise give back to the public: the initial impetus for the patent system in the first place. The liquidity afforded to ideas that Intellectual Ventures claims to create might, in fact, create enough social good that the drain via litigation is mollified. Given that they've claimed to be pacifists here, the deception laid bare looks particularly evil.
- dskhatri 17y ago"There is no counterbalancing force. " There is a company offering an interesting service to fight patent trolls: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2010/tc2010021_382392.htm?chan=technology_special+report+--+ceo+guide+to+patent+trolls_special+report%3A+ceo+guide+to+patent+trolls http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2010/tc201...
- dhyasama 17y agoI'm a cookbook junkie and was looking forward to IV's 1500 page codification of molecular gastronomy. Then I saw this article and put two and two together. IV won't make enough money selling a cookbook to justify the expense of their kitchen and staff. I'll bet money it's all an exercise to patent cooking techniques. Cloaking it as a cookbook has allowed them to bring in some big names to help out. That's dirty pool.
- ironkeith 17y agoIn the book "Superfreakenomics", IV is shown to be actively developing insanely simple/improbable solutions for hurricanes (by cycling warmer ocean water with cooler water using tires and concrete), global warming (by pumping sulphur into the statosphere), and malaria (with female mosquito detecting lasers). The book protrayed them as developing prototypes for those "inventions", so patents seem fitting.