Nathan Myhrvold Live Q&A

Last week we announced that co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, had agreed to do a live Q&A. Earlier today we posted a few of his answers, but now's your chance to hear it directly from him. Mr. Myhrvold will be answering your questions below until 12:30 PDT. Please keep it to one question per post so everyone gets a chance. Update: 04/03 19:41 GMT by S : 12:30pm PDT has come and gone, and Mr. Myhrvold has to move on. Thanks for the answers! Here's a link to his user page if you'd just like to read his responses.

Re:Court education?

[NMyhrvold]

THis is a problem for our justice system in general, inculding patents. Even in criminal matters things like DNA testimony and other scientific evidence can be hard to understand. Patents is even worse because iti s about high tech areas. The way this is handled at present is via expert witnesses that try to explain the techology in terms that he judge and jury can relate to. It does not always work. Here is a odd but true thing - you cannot be a patent attorney without having an engineering or science degree, but that isn't applied to the judge or jury. So, I agree that this is a challenge. In some other areas of the law where things are complex - like taxes or bankruptcy there are special courts with judges that do have expertise in the area. That was disucssed during the recent patent reform debate in congress - but it did not make it in the bill.

Re:food world and software patent world

[NMyhrvold]

It turns out that copyright law covers code, but it does NOT cover a recipe! If you write a cookbook, the actual text is covered by copyright but the proportions of the ingredients and steps are not covered if you put them in different words. Patents do apply to food, but only for things that are really novel. Dippin' dots ice cream is covered by a patent. Kind of a sick story - the guy who invented it worked in a plant that froze bull semen in liquid nitrogen - it made little balls, so he tried ice cream. Turns out it tastes better....