Intellectual Ventures
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| Type | Privately held company |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Nathan Myhrvold, Edward Jung, Peter Detkin, Gregory Gorder |
| Headquarters | Bellevue, Washington, United States |
| Number of locations | 10 |
| Industry | Intellectual Property |
| Employees | 500 |
| Website | www.intellectualventures.com |
Intellectual Ventures is a private company claiming to invest in "pure invention." Its goal is to develop a large patent portfolio rather than to actually develop new systems, although it launched a prototyping and research laboratory in 2009 called Intellectual Ventures Lab.[1] Its employees are predominantly patent attorneys, physicists, engineers and biotechnologists. They also have hired prominent scientists to perform invention including Robert Langer of MIT, Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology, Ed Harlow of Harvard Medical School, Danny Hillis of Applied Minds, and Sir John Pendry of Imperial College.
Intellectual Ventures was originally founded in 2000 by Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung of Microsoft as a private partnership. It lists Peter Detkin of Intel, and Gregory Gorder of Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based law firm as co-founders. They reportedly have raised over $5 billion from many large companies including Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Apple, Google and eBay. Reported statistics claim over 20,000 purchased patents and applications and over 2000 internally-developed inventions. Licenses to patents are obtained through investment and royalties.[2]
Intellectual Ventures internally-developed inventions include a safer nuclear reactor design (which won the MIT Technology Review Top 10 Emerging Technologies in 2009) that can use uranium waste as fuel or thorium which is plentiful and poses no proliferation risk,[3] a mosquito targeting laser based on Strategic Defense Initiative Star Wars technology,[4] and a series of computer models of infectious disease.[5]
Intellectual Ventures purchased patents have largely been kept secret, though press releases with Telcordia and Transmeta indicated some or all of their patent portfolios were sold to Intellectual Ventures. Intellectual Ventures claims its purchasing activity as of early 2009 has sent $315 million to individual inventors and $848 million to small and medium size enterprises as well as returning "approximately $1 billion" to investors without filing any lawsuits.[6]
In March 2009 Intellectual Ventures announced expansion into China, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore to build partnerships with prominent scientists and institutions in Asia to create and market inventions..[7]
Intellectual Ventures staff participate actively in United States patent policy, filing several amicus briefs in court proceedings as well as several testimony before the legislature. The company is considered to be policy aligned with small inventors and academic institutions.
Despite no history of litigation thus far Intellectual Ventures has been described as a "patent troll", accumulating patents not in order to develop products around them but with the goal to pressure large companies into paying licensing fees. Recent reports indicate that Verizon and Cisco made payments of $200 million to $400 million for investment and access to the Intellectual Ventures portfolio.[8]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Intellectual Ventures - Main web site.
- Intellectual Ventures Lab - Lab web site and blog.
- The New Yorker, Annals of Innovation: In the Air, by Malcolm Gladwell, May 12, 2008
- Intellectual Asset Management Article (cover), IV Moves from Myth to Reality, by Victoria Slind-Flor, August 2006 (PDF)
- BusinessWeek Article (cover), Microsoft Inside Nathan Myhrvold's Mysterious New Idea Machine, July 3, 2006
- CNN Article, Who's afraid of Nathan Myhrvold?, Jun 26, 2006
- IP Law & Business Article (cover), Mind Games, by Lisa Lerer, May 2006 (PDF)
- Boston Globe Article, To boost innovation, firm networks scholars, April 3, 2006
- Forbes Article, Patent Stalker, November 14 2005 (Summary)
- CNET News Article, Microsoft alums amass thousands of patents, November 3, 2005
- Newsweek Article, Factory of the Future?, by Brad Stone, November 2004 - Main source for this article.
[edit] References
- ^ "Bellevue lab is an inventor's real dream" by Brier Dudley, The Seattle Times - 27 May, 2009
- ^ "Ubuntu: Microsoft is Patent Pal" by Matthew Broersma, PCWorld - 23 May 2007
- ^ "TR10: Traveling-Wave Reactor" by Matt Wald, Technology Review - March/April 2009
- ^ "Mosquito laser gun offers new hope on malaria" by Tony Allen-Mills - 15 March 2009
- ^ "Mathematics, Mosquitoes, and Malaria" by Philip Eckhoff, Hertz Foundation Biennial Symposium - Spring 2009, Volume 11
- ^ "Inside Intellectual Ventures" by Jeff Wild, IAM Magazine, 19 May 2009.
- ^ "Intellectual Ventures’ Indian Deal Epitomizes Strategy to Support Invention in Asia" by Gregory T. Huang, XConomy, 20 March 2009.
- ^ "Tech Guru Riles the Industry By Seeking Huge Patent Fees" by Amol Sharma and Don Clark, The Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2008.
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