"Being a Patent Troll Now Patented" and "Nathan Myhrvold's Cunning Plan to Prevent 3-D Printer Piracy"

 Here's the first half of the headline:

"Being a Patent Troll Now Patented"

Yo, I got your second derivative right here.

From Infectious Greed:
The end is nigh: Being a patent troll is now patented. Despair.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR EXTRACTING VALUE FROM A PORTFOLIO OF ASSETS
Abstract
A system and methods for extracting value from a portfolio of assets, for example a patent portfolio, are described. By granting floating privileges described herein, a portfolio owner can extend an opportunity for obtaining an interest in selected assets from the portfolio to a client who lacks the resources to accumulate and maintain such a portfolio, in return for an annuity stream to the portfolio owner. The floating privilege can take many forms, depending on the needs of the client and the nature of the assets in the portfolio. The privilege is executed for a set of assets selected by the client and approved by the portfolio owner in accordance with a floating privilege agreement controlling the floating privilege.

via United States Patent Application: 0070244837.

That was from last year but I figured it was a nice juxtaposition with the story below.
There are a couple potentially big intellectual property cases up before the Supreme Court this term that I had intended to get to this week but won't.

In the meantime here's MIT's Technology Review:

A patent that covers digital encryption of "objects" could bring copy protection to 3-D printing. 

Sometime in the none-too-distant future, replacing your favorite coffee mug or creating a new iPhone case might be as simple as downloading a design you like from the Internet and firing up your 3-D printer.

Zip, zap, zip, and voilà.

Most 3-D printing has been done in industry or by hobbyists who share their designs freely online. Now Intellectual Ventures, the company run by Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft CTO and alleged patent troll, has been issued a patent on a system that could prevent people from printing objects using designs they haven’t paid for.

The patent, issued Tuesday by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, is titled “Manufacturing control system” and describes methods for managing “object production rights.”

The patent basically covers the idea of digital rights management, or DRM, for 3-D printers. Like with e-books that won’t open unless you pay Barnes & Noble and use its Nook reader, with Myhrvold’s technology your printer wouldn’t print unless you’ve paid up.

“You load a file into your printer, then your printer checks to make sure it has the rights to make the object, to make it out of what material, how many times, and so on,” says Michael Weinberg, a staff lawyer at the non-profit Public Knowledge, who reviewed the patent at the request of Technology Review. “It’s a very broad patent.”

The patent isn’t limited to 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing. It also covers using digital files in extrusion, ejection, stamping, die casting, printing, painting, and tattooing and with materials that include “skin, textiles, edible substances, paper, and silicon printing.”

Control schema: A drawing from a patent won by Intellectual Ventures describes how to control digital rights for 3-D printing.

“This is an attempt to assert ownership over DRM for 3D printing. It’s ‘Let’s use DRM to stop unauthorized copying of things’,” says Weinberg, author of It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up, a 2010 white paper on how intellectual property rights could harm the development of 3-D printing....MORE

See also:
Smart Investing: Myhrvold’s Patent Firm Sees Revenue Swell

Really Smart Investing

I was having an email conversation with a really smart guy* which led to my doing a quick search at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
This, of course, reminded me of the Ocean Tomo 300™ index....

Free download: 10 terabytes of patents and trademarks (GOOG)

"Andreessen Horowitz Raises $1.5B For Third Fund" (the Smartest Firm in the Valley or the Most Dangerous?)
Like Bain Capital, Andreessen Horowitz is also invested in the Kardashians, in AH's case by way of Kim's fashion site ShoeDazzle....

"Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Investing in Rap Genius"

I'm guessing they read Alphaville's post on intellectual property, saw the writing on the digital wall and decided the patent troll business wouldn't be lasting much longer than the hydrogen-Zeppelin (German patent number 98580) did after the Hindenburg disaster....