Tim writes: “the blindingly obvious conclusion from this is that patents are way, way too easy to get.”

Noel:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Gates again, from 1991: “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 stand-still today. The solution . . . is patent exchanges . . . and patenting as much as we can. . . . A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.”

Tim writes: “the blindingly obvious conclusion from this is that patents are way, way too easy to get.”

First, there is a difference between applying for patents (as IV is doing) and having them issued by the USPTO (which you seem to conflate with the act of patent apps). Its easy to see how Gladwell did not arrive at your “blindingly obvious” conclusion.

Tim writes: “the classic theory of patent law says… inventions are so difficult and expensive to produce that we wouldn’t get them at all without patent protection. That’s clearly not true of the “inventions” IV is developing, which means that if IV does get patents on them, the patent system is seriously flawed.”

Second, the majority of patent theories are ex post, not ex ante. Its not a “serious flaw” of the patent system that some instances of patenting are not analytically consistent with one of several theories (hint, IV’s work maps to the commercialization theory, efficient transaction and open innovation theories- I can send links if you’re curious).

Of course, the point of the patent system is that ideas are cheap, and when things get too cheap, you have to prop them up with government price supports, as good libertarians will tell you.

Agreed. I came to the same conclusion; however, I’m sympathetic. He’s a writer, not an IP expert.

Other people are having the same ideas, but because they’re not as cynical as Myhrvold, they’re trying to actual produce a working product with it. And by the time they’ve done that, Myhrvold will have beaten them to the patent office. Somebody else does 99 percent of the work and Myhrvold gets most of the profit.

Okay, I can see how one might get cynical with the current state of some things in the IP industry, but let’s not be hasty to label Myhrvold as a cynic that’s profiting from someone else’s work… IV is providing a service that liaises inventors to product developers. Inventors often lack the resources to fund the fruition of their ideas, and large product development corporations that have the bandwidth are either too slow or, quite frankly, not innovative enough to generate the ideas. IV is providing something, not taking advantage of the system.