To many in the high-tech business, a troll plots his schemes in a white office building on a hill in this leafy suburb of Seattle.
This is the home of Intellectual Ventures, which, depending on whom you ask, is either the biggest, most aggressive patent troll on the planet or a pioneering company that's helping inventors get their fair share.
The question of "whom you ask" is a big one, of course. Since it was founded in 2000 by Microsoft veterans Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung, Intellectual Ventures has -- through $5 billion in investment funds and its own brainstorming efforts -- collected nearly 70,000 "intellectual assets" on technologies ranging from nuclear power to camera lenses. It currently controls about 40,000 intellectual assets.
Suffice to say, Intellectual Ventures is, in the minds of many, the world's biggest patent troll, waiting to demand a fee for what you were sure was an original idea. Is it the most hated company in tech? Well, you'd be hard pressed to find another outfit that causes quite as much outrage in Silicon Valley.
"Nathan Myhrvold is a very, very, very smart man. He may be the wealthiest man on Earth when all is said and done," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of the health care startup CareZone and the former chief exec of Sun Microsystems. "Congratulations on arbitraging the patent system."
Is that a fair dig? CNET went behind the scenes at Intellectual Ventures to gain a better understanding of how exactly this company works. To hear people there tell it, they are the furthest thing from a troll. Instead, they are pioneering the concept of what they call "invention capital." In a series of interviews, Intellectual Ventures executives explained how their company works and how they hope to make money from concepts such as old-fashioned brainstorming sessions and "requests for invention" sent out to a collective of scientists, inventors, and big thinkers.
"Nathan Myhrvold is a very, very, very smart man. He may be the wealthiest man on Earth when all is said and done," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of the health care startup CareZone and the former chief exec of Sun Microsystems. "Congratulations on arbitraging the patent system."
Is that a fair dig? CNET went behind the scenes at Intellectual Ventures to gain a better understanding of how exactly this company works. To hear people there tell it, they are the furthest thing from a troll. Instead, they are pioneering the concept of what they call "invention capital." In a series of interviews, Intellectual Ventures executives explained how their company works and how they hope to make money from concepts such as old-fashioned brainstorming sessions and "requests for invention" sent out to a collective of scientists, inventors, and big thinkers.
Fun stuff, right? But the other side of Intellectual Ventures, for lack of a better word, is the troll business, an aggressive, lawyer-driven organization looking to make money from the many, many patents it owns, whether you like it or not. You don't see that part of the business celebrated in the lobby. But it's a big reason why all the fun stuff is here.
Intellectual Ventures employees acknowledge their unpleasant public image but argue that they're trying to turn that around. Lawsuits? Sure, they happen, executives say, but Intellectual Ventures has only been directly involved in a handful of them (more on that later). What they are really trying to to do, executives argue, is make sure inventors get their fair share. Invention should not be charity work, Myhrvold has often argued, people should get paid for it.
"The set of incentives that go around patents, that's part of how the system works. Inventors should get rich. We should have more inventors. It's good for everybody," he said at the D conference.
Seems like a reasonable point. So why then does the mere mention of Intellectual Ventures enrage so many people? Isn't it reasonable that you should have to pay a license fee (the core of their business) in order to use technology covered by someone else's patent? We'd have liked to ask Myhrvold ourselves, but through a spokesperson he declined repeated requests to even answer a short list of e-mailed questions.
Intellectual Ventures employees acknowledge their unpleasant public image but argue that they're trying to turn that around. Lawsuits? Sure, they happen, executives say, but Intellectual Ventures has only been directly involved in a handful of them (more on that later). What they are really trying to to do, executives argue, is make sure inventors get their fair share. Invention should not be charity work, Myhrvold has often argued, people should get paid for it.
"The set of incentives that go around patents, that's part of how the system works. Inventors should get rich. We should have more inventors. It's good for everybody," he said at the D conference.
Seems like a reasonable point. So why then does the mere mention of Intellectual Ventures enrage so many people? Isn't it reasonable that you should have to pay a license fee (the core of their business) in order to use technology covered by someone else's patent? We'd have liked to ask Myhrvold ourselves, but through a spokesperson he declined repeated requests to even answer a short list of e-mailed questions.
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