Lest anyone be taken in by this:<p>Myhrvold, and his outfit Intellectual Ventures, was/is one of the most egregious patent trolls of the lot. Their business model relies on victims being scared off and settling out of court. Courts, and IV's harassment targets, are beginning to become wise to this and their claims are being taken to court and thrown out - effectively breaking IV's business model. This has all been chronicled ad nauseam on HN. So perhaps, realizing this, we're now getting a flurry of puff-pieces to re-write the story ahead of them having to figure out how to make an honest living.<p>No amount of PR lipstick should redeem this particular pig.
A more common frame is Nathan Myhrvold, Patent Troll - <a href="https://psmag.com/magazine/a-patent-boogieman-with-the-potential-to-obliterate-aspiring-startups" rel="nofollow">https://psmag.com/magazine/a-patent-boogieman-with-the-poten...</a>
It always bugged me that Myrhvold could be such a negative force in tech while doing so many cool things with e.g. food and dinoasaurs. This article really helped connect the dots: he's the original idea guy, with so many good ideas that quite a few can succeed despite a lack of interest in "connecting ideas with reality".<p>The frustrating part is when a government-granted monopoly makes that kind of ideating (including about who else's ideas to purchase) so much more profitable than executing. Maybe both are honest work, but the state of patent law puts gives so much more power to the person imagining things than the person making them work, it's crazy.
I fixed the rubric to be more factually accurate:<p>"He was the physicist who went to Microsoft and made his fortune. These days he’s a patent troll, extortionist, bad chef and a litigious piece of shit"
I feel like the guy who's about to say "what about all of the good things Hitler did?", but does patent trolling invalidate the good things this guy has helped contribute?<p>I feel like that the tech community, for all of our preaching about meritocracy and rational discussion, we have no problem piling on a fair amount of demonizing of people who engage in things we don't agree with, but may have some social value.<p>One person's patent trolling is another's patent protecting.<p>Again, none of this to defend his worst actions, but it's not like Satan created IV and uses it to eat children. Yes, this is a puff piece, but I'm always surprised that our community has no issue crapping on some people with no acknowledgement of anything positive they add.