Hunting The Muse

Working With IP

I wrote my earlier entry on patents and IP partially because I'm trying to muddle my way through my thoughts on a professional opportunity I have.

I've written about quite a few ideas I have on the power law (search my blog to see), and I have a few more that are muddled enough that I haven't published them yet. In addition, I've written in the past about music technology and recommender solutions, summaries of which you can find among my tangrams.com writings here.

Anyway, one of the things I've been interested in is collaborative filtering. When I was more closely following the financial tipping thing that was being worked on as a result of Napster, I started talking to the guys that were running fairtunes.com, and it turned out that one of them started working with one of the known experts in collaborative filtering technologies. I found this really interesting and kept this expert as a contact.

As time has gone on I've found that one of my most central interests is in counteracting the power law. Whether it is through allowing a new musician to have a shot at supporting him or herself through finding an audience, or finding ways to have a wide variety of people's opinions equally weighted, or allowing news items from any source in the world to be distributed according to their worth, I want to be involved in breaking down barriers and allowing the movement of information, and have that information be visible according to its merit, and not simply according to the popularity of its messengers.

note to self: maybe popularity of messengers can be co-opted

Well. I recently wrote this expert about an idea I had. He wrote me back saying he was working on something similar. I have no doubt he'd be able to solve things I can't due to his statistical knowledge and training. He thinks I might have value as an implementor.

And that's where the IP messiness comes into play. I like my ideas. I've also written on my blog before that I have more ideas than I can implement. My compromise to myself there in order to keep my sanity is to publicize the ideas I have that I don't have the willingness or time to implement, just in case they might cause enough ripples to cause themselves to exist through other means. I could keep them to myself but that is idea suicide if I know I won't implement them. I could patent them and wait for someone else to implement them and then seek licensing, but that is just not what I believe - it is restriction of evolution rather than encouragement, and god knows we need to evolve beyond where we are now, and in a direction that encourages MORE freedom of thought, idea, and movement than we have now; not less.

So that should make my side easy, shouldn't it? Well, not so fast. Because it seems the only way this could work is for me to open myself up to the possibility that ideas *I* have would be restricted, and perhaps restricted even to me. They'd want commercial rights to ideas coming out of our discussions, even though my sole ideas would remain solely mine. And part of what would be mixed in would be various trade secrets and patents they have - implementation inventions (which I don't have a problem with), and restricted ideas (which I might). I might especially have a problem with restricted ideas if they then poisoned mine.

This is a gross simplification, but it's how I abstractly view it. For sake of argument we'll say that we are both working towards the same goal. For sake of argument we'll say that both circles are impossible, neither can meet their goals alone. For sake of argument we'll say that either one of our implementations are only possible if our ideas overlap.*

I believe and trust that their ideas are more well-developed than mine. They know I have an independent interest to develop my own implementation on my own time without being paid. They know it is currently impossible for me to reach my lower square without their help.

So far it appears their solution is to reroute me to work on their upper square in exchange for possible equity. I think, but I am not sure, that this means I will be restricted from reaching my lower square. Especially because, what if some of their ideas are a direct superset of some of mine? That almost certainly has to be the case. Wouldn't mine just get swallowed and wouldn't I be limited from pursuing them further because they'd be poisoned by the superset? That's the crux of this whole mess, the IP is viral. I don't think "possible equity" is enough to make up for that.

I'm still thinking about it.

* Obviously I could do my implementation by accumulating their knowledge myself through training and statistical study. They could also find someone else to help. They might also not be interested or find value in my ideas at all; and might only find value in my implementation skills.

Posted by Curt at March 2, 2003 03:18 AM