Nathan Myhrvold Quotes

Every piece of software written today is likely going to infringe on someone else's patent.

I've never filed a patent lawsuit. I hope never to file a patent lawsuit. That may be unrealistic, but it would be great if I could avoid doing it... Lawsuits are a ridiculous way to do business.

Don't fight the patent, fight the infringement.

At Linkabit, we put little effort and energy into patenting things.

If people don't get paid for their inventions, that's not a good thing. In the case of many patents, there are people who aren't in a position to take them to the next level. If you don't enforce your rights, no one is going to enforce them for you.

Our strategy in dealing with patents in Mono is the same strategy that any other software developer would take. In the event of a patent claim, we will try to find prior art to the claim of the patent.

Taking out a patent is an invitation to a lawsuit.

The reforms proposed by the Patent Reform Act of 2007 are precisely the type of congressional action needed. The Act will remove obstacles to growth and restore balance to the patent system.

The software patent problem is not limited to Mono. Software patents affect everyone writing software today.

With the rise of software patents, engineers coding new stuff - whether within a large software company or as kids writing smartphone apps - are exposed to a claim that somewhere a prior patent is being infringed.

I've fought court battles over my inventions before.

In an industry with highly sequential innovation, it may be better for society to scrap patents altogether than try to tighten them.

Patents are being used to wage war in the digital world, and as a result, patents have become a toll gate on the road of innovation.

Making money from enforcing patents is no more wrong than investing in preferred stock.

It's very hard for individual inventors to get paid. For the same reason that private equity is valuable - broadly, that's a good thing - in the case of patents, many that own them aren't in a good position to take the next step.

I would have had my patent long, long ago, and it would have run out long, long ago. I would have made, maybe, $100.000, much less that the patent has brought me now.

It almost goes without saying that when you are a startup, one of the first things you do is you start setting aside money to defend yourself from patent lawsuits, because any successful company, even moderately successful, is going to get hit by a patent lawsuit from someone who's just trying to look for a payout.

There's no such thing as a legal right to break patents in the United States.

Technology people have as much interest in protecting patents as the entertainment industry.

I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.

People are getting patents on things that are too general.

Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.

If you patent a discovery which is unique, say a human gene or even just one particular function of a human gene, then you are actually creating a monopoly, and that's not the purpose of the world of patents.

When we began Qualcomm, it had become quite clear that it was very important to patent new ideas.

The payment made by a manufacturer to a patentee for the privilege of using the patent process, is usually termed, in commercial language, a rent; and under the same head must be ranked all extraordinary qualities of body and mind.