Sarah Lacy is currently working on TechCrunch senior editor. It is also a prize-winning journalist and author of two books of critically acclaimed, "once you're lucky, twice you're good: the rebirth of Silicon Valley and the rise of Web 2.0" (Gotham books, April 2008) and "a brilliant, Crazy, cheeky: how the top 1% of entrepreneurs profit from global chaos. ? Read More
Watch me ruin your Sunday afternoon with a single word. Are you Ready? Here we go.
Patents.
This week on NBC press: here we talked about the theme of most of our readers to equate the long, slow, painful root canals. Or even worse. Laura Sydell NPR is also on the show and if you haven't listened to it on This American Life episode, titled "when the patent attack", go do it now. We will wait.
Nathan Myhrvold, who some call Voldemorta tech – this is a bit of a mystery to me. Sydell said she had no intention of a piece to go so badly after the intellectual ventures, and as you hear in the podcast things they thought were harmless issues were addressed as "podobaâ."
My feeling is that intellectual ventures has not started include trolls. That it was intended, as Myhrvold to give inventors who do not want to start a company a way to monetize their inventions and be an effective mediator in a broken system. This is the promise of RPX Corp., which recently became public and reinforced by Izhar Amony on the Charles River Ventures. Armony also invests in intellectual ventures, and we gave him the opportunity to defend against accusations of "patent troll" here.
But even if you are willing to give intellectual enterprise for lack of evidence, the NPR piece clearly provides some very upsetting affects ripple which did not deny the intellectual enterprises of the group. The beauty of radio programs you can hear many attempts of journalists to provide IV way to explain themselves, and they just dig a large hole.
When asked, couldn't one site example of win-win, they promise: invention they have bought from brilliant tinkerer and sold the company so that they could bring it to market for it. They provide example generates NPR down the rabbit hole that land in the corridor in East Texas, complete separation of shell companies whose whole reason there is the acquisition of patents and suing the company actually building things, funneling some of those proceeds back to the intellectual enterprises.
This American life ends, comparing the patent situation of an arms race, referring to recent fighting patent portfolio of big tech companies. Although the apt metaphor, I couldn't help but think another: unions.
I understand, I invite well organized hate mail by writing it. As patents I see unions as incredibly well conceived and one time of vital importance to the development of America. But let's face it: incivility unions are also at the root of many of our capitalist problems today. It's hard to know what happened to the aviation industry, automotive industry, public education and feel that unions are perfectly sound effect in the corporate world.
As patents – who also seek to protect the little guy-unions were initiated for the right reasons. But patents, they can be twisted into something that hurts innovation, competition and, ultimately, of consumers and the country as a whole. Alliances essentially create a dynamic, "us versus them", which makes the victory against the leadership of the company's top goals, does not serve customers, innovation, or in the case of education, the education of children.
It's not too surprising that I feel this way because I spent most of my career, covering businesses in Silicon Valley, where the absence of trade unions as wonderful as no bailouts. I've been reading a lot about the history of Silicon Valley recently and was amazed at just how core lack of trade unions was the evolution of American tech industry. It has enabled the permanent creative destruction which keeps Silicon Valley relevant and thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce famously brought midwestern values in Silicon Valley, but he reportedly hated the unions as a "death threat to Intel and the semiconductor industry," according to Tom Wolfe 1983 Esquire profile of Neuss. The construction of a huge new manufacturing industry, which was set up in such a way that the workers did not want to merge might have been Neuss & co. 's greatest legacy. It was one of the many important lines in the sand, they drew between the way business was done in the United States and how this should be done in the second half of the 20th century. Wolf says:
"The battles are part of the locality of the ancient East. If Intel were divided into workers and bosses, this means that each side had to squeeze money out of the skins on the other hand, the enterprise will be completed. Motivation will no longer be domestic; It will be objectified in the mortal form of rules and procedures for handling complaints. Once, when he came to the vote, the Union lost the substantial margin of four to one. Intel employees agreed with Neuss. Trade unions were pat dead hand past ...Noyce and Intel have been on the road to El Dorado ".
This mentality-kernel with the now common shares, we-work-hard-and-win-together culture startups, having spidered through many of the corporate world. We do not think that as "anti-Union" now, because we do not produce really anything in the Silicon Valley anymore. But then it was clearly a fork in the road, which dramatically changed the Silicon Valley, making it able to develop, change and stay relevant as the world has changed around it, in contrast to Detroit.
It is a pity that no one ability or courage to do the same position when well-intentioned but clearly dysfunctional rules around software patents, codified, something in the Patent Office was against and most of the industry wishes never happened. Of course there is a movement now to reform the patent system, but as we have seen over the past few weeks, our Government is exactly in the best now. It's hard for me to hope that something will change.
Far glory NPR and Sydell for hacking down real impact of this broken system and Kudos to Chris Sacca is one of the only investors willing to talk about it on the record. More conversation, you can move beyond the geeky Sand Hill Road, a better chance of solving it. Can be.
Company:
INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE
Intellectual ventures is a private company founded in 2000 to invest in "pure invention." its purpose is to develop a large patent portfolio, and not actually develop new ...
Read MoreNathan Myhrvold founded intellectual ventures after retiring from his post as Chief Strategist and Chief Technical Officer of Microsoft Corporation. He has more than 18 United States patents and. ..
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