It’s good speculation to wonder who the new troll on the block will bother with its new found confidence. The whole behaviour doesn’t feel very MSFT but you can’t disagree easily with the “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” logic and approach.

Of course we agree, 100%, with the sentiment. We’ve previously commented that from our work, the UK seems behind even the best in Europe in seeing the value in IP, with the best in Europe being also behind the best in the World by several steps. Not yet too late but I’d personally prefer to see our new leader shouting about how the UK invests in what it’s good at and leading the World in IP in those areas than trying to haphazardly play Obama with only 1% of the charisma, and therefore only creating a negative impact on Brand UK. It’s not too late to apologise David, and I’d be polishing off my “Apologising for Dummies” guide, 2010 edition, before the Pakistani Prime Minister arrives this week.

Others are either more focused, business wise, or by the time we work it out, others will have captured all of the valuable IP real estate.  Wonder how this clear message could find its way into UK Government policy?

“The method UTIMCO has chosen to use in this reporting is not the measure we believe captures the value of our business. We don’t believe that our current cash flow, which we projected would be negative for many years as we build up our patent portfolios, signals that we are declining in value. To the contrary, given the bulk of our spending is on patent development, that spending is driving the growth in our value.” 

PR is a key part of IVs business. Creating wealth (or trying to) like a troll without looking like one seems like quite a delicate balance.  Quite a rapid reply  from IV but it would seem to be too early to judge whether this version of trolling pays or not.

I think we will be watching this one very carefully. As IV are typically very good at PR they should be responding any time now.

Well it looks like today common sense didn’t prevail and we took another backward step to giving in to the trolls with the the announced settlement of the Paice and Toyota litigation brought before the ITC.

http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/07/20/1117910/inventor-of-hybrid-vehicle-system.html

To be fair it’s not new news. Paice has been chasing Toyota for 6 years and Toyota has given in faced with the threat of a US ban on its products. But this is no genuine IP dispute as with the Handy Humper (see below), this is all about money, and all about how the legal system in the US can be played by lawyers.” It’s not pretty, it’s not balanced and it’s not fair, but it’s how the system works, we all know it’s fu***d but just accept it and move on..”…you can just imagine the senior counsel to Toyota saying to his CEO explaining the arbitrary tax that has just been imposed on the Prius.

We’ve said enough on the topic to date (in fact I don’t think we’ve talked about anything else since IPBC, in and of itself giving this worthless pursuit some air time that it doesn’t deserve) so this post is only for information.

Can US legislators really afford not to step in and bring some common sense here? Can litigation really be threatened to stop the Prius and other hybrids from entering the US market?  

Not that Mr Severinsky should not, with a valid patent, be denied (that’s a fair number of negatives in 12 words but you get the idea) some fair compensation for his invention. But he should not be able to threaten jobs should he? Or get some exorbitant tax awarded? Ri-dic-u-lous!

More, no doubt, to follow. Maybe next week we’ll find some positive IP news. I’ll search hard I promise.

A heavy heart....

Oh dear, oh dear. The NY Times reports overnight that those lovely trolls at NTP are back with a vengeance and on a new parasitic crusade to extort monopoly rent from the smartphone market. http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/smartphone-patent-suits-challenge-big-makers/

As any reader of this blog will know from recent posts I’m no lover of this sort of activity.  As ever the parasitic troll latches itself onto the larger more successful players in the market. Ron Epstein tries to sound like the credible defender of the little guy “these people are going to have to deal with our patents”. Oh dear, how boring is this all sounding!! Why don’t you just take your $612.5m and go and do something worthwhile with it, like feeding a few starving children or sponsoring a few wells in African villages?

I had heard at IPBC that NTP’s patents had been largely wiped out in re-examination (can’t recall who said that?) but it seems not and enough of their key claims are still standing to allow them to issue a whole bunch of new threats. You know who I feel sorry for in this situation, poor Apple, who, as now the world’s most influential (back off from most successful but it’s arguable) gets more than its fair share of parasites. And all because they have the World’s most sexy, most popular and most in demand products.

I also met with Eran Zur and Thomas Westerlund from RPX at IPBC. I can’t quite recall if Apple is on their member list but I’d like to see the poacher turned gamekeeper approach to NTP and how successful this might be. Expect to see or hear rumours of visits to NTP by RPX. From meeting Eran and from market rumours it is said that he’s one of the world’s best negotiators. This could actually turn out to be fun.

Unfortunately however it’s all a lot of a sideshow and damages the credibility of IP as a brand and its ability to crawl into being viewed as an asset class. Joren and I are writing this month in IAM Magazine on the subject of “Copyright as the orphan IP right” (well he’s writing it, I’m credited for a few small but pointed contributions) and it is fascinating to contrast how innovation in and around the copyright world contrasts with that in the patent world.

Too many current and ex-lawyers in and around patents I’m afraid. What was the old lawyer joke? Actually there are tons but this one is pretty apposite—

A physician, an engineer and a lawyer were arguing about whose profession was the oldest.

The surgeon announced, “Remember how God removed a rib from Adam to create Eve? Obviously, medicine is the oldest profession.”

The engineer replied, “But before that, God created the heavens and the earth from chaos, in less than a week. You have to admit that was a remarkable feat of engineering, and that makes engineering an older profession than medicine.”

The lawyer smirked, and said, “Who do you think created the chaos?”

 Ha ha…very totally unfunny. Can somebody with a tiny degree of credibility sort these crazy kids out before they wreck the house for good?

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2010/07/02/2010-07-02_sextoy_makers_patience_reaches_climax.html. It would be an easy and cheap shot to follow the editor of the site and try a few double-entendres (fnaar, fnaar-gosh I’ve just remembered Finbarr Saunders  from Viz, left–is Viz still going?) but the heart of the story is about how powerful IP can be in just about any market. And this, apparently, is a very large market.

The reference to the ITC is one that anyone who knows IP in the US will know well. The International Trade Commission is a quite excellent way to use IP to stop foreign imports at, or actually before, they get to the US border, described here in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_International_Trade_Commission

You can just imagine the male patent attorney who wrote the patents smirking and sniggering Finbarr style at the unique and non-obvious features of his client’s products. But when the impact is that the Handy Humper and the Travel Honeypot are stopped from entering the US market (that one was not deliberate but I really should take it out in the next edit) one can begin to see that IP makes its mark in most every business and market.

Oldman-baddie

I can’t leave Munich without a comment on that NPE session. Picture the scene. Have you ever seen the film the Fifth Element? Gary Oldman, the excellent Gary Oldman, plays the baddie, the ultimate capitalist owner of everything sold or produced worldwide, everyone’s boss. He tips a glass from his desk, breaking it on the floor of his office, little robots come out from the walls, one a hoover, one a dustpan, one to wash, one to polish, all to demonstrate to Bruce Willis, the hero, how chaos and disorder is good as it gives us mindless humans a range of purposes and keeps us busy.

I’ve just sat through the IPBC session titled “Getting to Grips with NPEs”. Now that was a session which generated real emotion in me, and showed how amazing us humans are at spending time and effort on things that are ultimately meaningless.

I went through a large range of emotions. I started out neutral . Here we go, just another session about trolls, trolls justifying why even trolls do social good (we help small inventors make money from their IP!-well done, good for you), lawyers arguing over technicalities (rule 11, blah, blah blah), the anti-troll lobby screaming about how unfair the system is to allow this abuse and Dan McCurdy (we’ll come back to him later) giving his troll stats.

I quickly got into irritated. Mainly as the session was dominated by American accents justifying their respective positions. Mild anger soon followed. More American accents, more justification, more self-justifying arguments.

Soon followed by seething. Vigorous agreement with Nokia (great speech, really great speech Dr Schneider) and Technicolor (ex Thomson, good “I hate trolls” speech Beatrice de Russé). I found myself wanting to applaud. C’mon the anti-troll lobby!!!There was little room for middle ground in the room. And, for me, the anti-troll camp has my lifetime vote.

Why? Well it is quite simple really. With one very limited exception (genuine lone inventors) I concluded that the whole troll business model is just so lacking in any creativity or social worth. I found myself asking “What went wrong in these people’s childhoods or lives to lead to a conclusion that they can look themselves in the mirror and believe that they are doing anything good?”. Daniel Papst by the way gave a good human explanation if I understand their heritage, gamekeepers turned poachers.

And then I realised I owe slashdot an apology for ever expressing any admiration for organisations that create nothing. So here I am, saying sorry and asking for forgiveness for my error. I’ve now seen the inside and see how futile it all is.

The one exception that one has to make and should make it for the small and lone inventor. He/she deserves reward if he is the godfather/mother of a new technology that creates wealth. He or she, exceptionally, deserves a fair reward. The rest of you, have you really got nothing better to do?

Dan McCurdy is a legend in the IP world. An IBMer under Marshall Phelps, a licensing expert/jobbing consultant in Thinkfire (I’m sure I recall his profile with a dollar amount against his face for his lifetime licensing dollars generated), now AST. But how can these two statements be reconciled? Statement 1, timed at about 46 minutes in “I would be delighted to close down AST tomorrow if the NPE problem went away!!” (hooray!!), and then, at around 58 minutes in “When we buy patents in for our AST members, we commit to sell them within 12 months, and we sell them to the highest bidder, we sell to operating companies, aggregators, and….to NPEs”.

Excuse me, come again….WHAT!!! You perpetuate the problem by selling on patents, to NPE’s, who can then sue those who don’t have licenses as they aren’t your members.

Go back to the first image of Gary Oldman in the Fifth Element. What peculiar beings we are. Like my kids when they’ve nothing better to do they create chaos until a parent says stop. This really does need some high up parent to say stop. The US risks damaging its credibility as a country by this worthless pursuit, threatening new innovations by imposing a totally arbitrary and senseless tax created by some out of control kids. If we have anything we in Europe we can do to stop this catching on in Europe, we really should.So sorry Slashdot again, I got it badly wrong. I apologise.

There is nothing to admire in this.

Nir Kossovsky was excellent on reputation. A substantive move forward. Wayne Sobon was just crystal clear and highly contextual.

The Hall of Fame dinner was a privilege. Henry Blanco White’s acceptance for his father was totally charming and very English. Paul Michel’s speech was humble and modest for such a successful person.

I enjoyed our panel session. Three founders and myself. Carmen described herself as “the boss and the cleaner”. Joe is infectious and may well be an IP asset on his own. Johan I know turns out the lights and locks the doors before he goes home. All very talented but modest people. It was a super experience to be able to share the stage with them. Thanks to Joff and IAM for the invitation.