Intellectual Ventures

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Intellectual Ventures Management, LLC
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Websitewww.intellectualventures.com

Intellectual Ventures is an American private equity company that centers on the development and licensing of intellectual property. Intellectual Ventures is one of the top-five owners of U.S. patents, as of 2011.

patent trolling company,[2] the ultimate patent troll,[3] and the most hated company in tech.[4]

In 2009, the firm launched a prototyping and research laboratory, Intellectual Ventures Lab,[5] which attracted media controversy when the book SuperFreakonomics described its ideas for reducing global climate change. The firm also collaborates on humanitarian projects through its Global Good program.[6]

Overview

In 2000, Intellectual Ventures was founded as a private partnership by

royalties.[10] In March 2009, the firm announced expansion into China, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore to build partnerships with scientists and institutions in Asia.[citation needed
]

Investment funds

The company operates three primary investment funds:[11]

  • Invention Investment Fund (IIF), purchasing existing inventions and licensing them
  • Invention Development Fund (IDF), partnering chiefly with research institutions to file descriptions of new inventions
  • Investment Science Fund (ISF), focused on internally developed inventions

Intellectual Ventures Lab

In 2009, Intellectual Ventures launched a prototyping and research laboratory, Intellectual Ventures Lab, hiring scientists to imagine inventions which could exist but do not yet exist, and then filing descriptions of these inventions with the US Patent Office. Notable participants include

Sunday Times reported that the company applies for about 450 patents per year, in areas from vaccine research to optical computing and, as of May 2010, 91 of the applications had been approved.[12] 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,[13] a mosquito-targeting laser,[14] and a series of computer models of infectious disease.[15]

Their efforts to promote a method to reverse or reduce the effects of global climate change by artificially recreating the conditions from the aftermath of a volcanic eruption gained media coverage following the release of the book SuperFreakonomics, whose chapter about

geoengineering as a replacement for CO2 emissions reduction. Among the critics are Paul Krugman,[18] Brad DeLong,[19] The Guardian,[20] and The Economist.[21] Elizabeth Kolbert, a science writer for The New Yorker who has written extensively on global warming, contends that "just about everything they [Levitt and Dubner] have to say on the topic is, factually speaking, wrong."[22] In response, Levitt and Dubner have stated on their Freakonomics blog that global warming is man-made and an important issue. They warn against claims of an inevitable doomsday; instead they look to raise awareness of less traditional or popular, methods to tackle the potential problem of global warming.[23]

Lowell Wood, an "inventor in residence" at Intellectual Ventures, became the most-patented inventor in US history in 2015, breaking the record held by Thomas Edison for over 80 years.[24]

Global Good

Global Good was a not-for-profit collaboration between the firm and the Gates family, to develop solutions for pressing problems in the developing world. Its technologies included:

In mid-2020, Global Good was dismantled, with some of its components (most notably the

Gates Ventures.[29]

Companies created

Intellectual Ventures has created a number of independent companies to bring its discoveries to mass market. Examples include Kymeta, a satellite technology company,[30] TerraPower, which seeks to improve nuclear power,[31] Evolv, which applies metamaterials to imaging,[32] and Echodyne, a metamaterials-based radar communications company.[33]

Controversy

Main article:
Patent trolling

Publicly, Intellectual Ventures states that a major goal is to assist small inventors against corporations. In practice, the vast majority of IV's revenue comes from buying patents, aggregating these patents into a single portfolio spanning many disparate technologies and tying these patents together for license to other companies under the threat of litigation, or filing lawsuits for infringement of patents, a controversial practice referred to as "patent trolling."[34]

Intellectual Ventures' purchased patents have largely been kept secret, though press releases with

Hynix, Altera, Lattice and Microsemi of patent infringement. In September 2016, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that all the relevant patent claims in the lawsuit were invalid, because "the patent merely applies a well-known idea using generic computers".[38]

The company has been accused of hiding behind shell companies for earlier lawsuits,

mafia-style shakedown".[42] However, the firm's internal research, development, and commercialization activities have softened this image. Following a series of research project announcements by Intellectual Ventures, intellectual property columnist Jack Ellis wrote, "Although licensing is bound to remain a big part of what it does, the more agreements of the kind signed this week IV is involved in, the harder it will be to label as a troll."[citation needed
]

Intellectual Ventures staff are active in lobbying and testifying in court on United States patent policy.[43]

References

  1. Patently-O
    blog, May 18, 2011. Consulted on May 21, 2011.
  2. ^ "RPX and the complicated business of stockpiling patents for good, not evil". Pando. 9 September 2013.
  3. ^ Robertson, Adi (4 February 2014). "The ultimate patent troll is going to trial against Google and Motorola". The Verge.
  4. ^ Kerstetter, Jim. "Inside Intellectual Ventures, the most hated company in tech". CNET.
  5. ^ "Bellevue lab is an inventor's real dream" by Brier Dudley, The Seattle Times - 27 May 2009
  6. ^ "Global Good". www.intellectualventures.com. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  7. ^ "Defendants Certificate of Interest" (PDF). US District Court, N. California. 2011-05-16. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-06. Retrieved 2013-07-18.
  8. ^ "Intellectual Ventures Find a Patent". 2013-12-16.
  9. IAM Magazine
    . London. Issue 66. July/August 2014
  10. ^ "Ubuntu: Microsoft is Patent Pal" by Matthew Broersma, PCWorld - 23 May 2007
  11. ^ "Investing in Invention". Intellectual Ventures. Archived from the original on 2010-06-30. Retrieved 2010-12-26.
  12. ^ Harris, Mark (May 16, 2010). "Green Pioneers: Godfather of nutty inventions". The Times. London. Mark Harris, The Sunday Times, May 16, 2010
  13. ^ "TR10: Traveling-Wave Reactor"[permanent dead link] by Matt Wald, Technology Review - March/April 2009
  14. ^ "Mosquito laser gun offers new hope on malaria" by Tony Allen-Mills - 15 March 2009
  15. ^ "Mathematics, Mosquitoes, and Malaria" by Philip Eckhoff, Hertz Foundation Biennial Symposium - Spring 2009, Volume 11
  16. ^ "Introducing the Stratoshield". Intellectual Ventures. 2009-10-21.
  17. ^ Todd Bishop (2009-10-14). "Stratoshield: Nathan Myhrvold explains how to save the planet". TechFlash.
  18. ^ Paul Krugman (2009-10-17). "SuperFreakonomics on climate, part 1". The New York Times. they grossly misrepresent other peoples' research, in both climate science and economics
  19. ^ Brad DeLong (2009-10-19). "Yet More SuperFreakonomics Blogging". Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles. Levitt and Dubner today appear to no longer be thinking like economists
  20. ^ "Why SuperFreakonomics' authors are wrong on geo-engineering". The Guardian. London. 2009-10-19. Many commentators have already pointed out dozens of misquotes, misrepresentations and mistakes in the 'Global Cooling' chapter
  21. ^ "Freaking out: The controversy over SuperFreakonomics". The Economist. 2009-10-27. Retrieved 2009-11-06.
  22. ^ "Kolbert, Elizabeth (November 16, 2009). "Hosed: Is there a quick fix for the climate?" [rev. of Levitt and Dubner's SuperFreakonomics and Al Gore's Our Choice]". New Yorker.
  23. ^ Levitt, Steven D. (2009-10-17). "The Rumors of Our Global-Warming Denial Are Greatly Exaggerated". The New York Times. "... we believe that rising global temperatures are a man-made phenomenon and that global warming is an important issue to solve. Where we differ from the critics is in our view of the most effective solutions to this problem." and "The real purpose of the chapter is figuring out how to cool the Earth if indeed it becomes catastrophically warmer... if we weren't convinced that global warming was worth worrying about, we wouldn't have written a chapter about proposed solutions.
  24. ^ "How an F Student Became America's Most Prolific Inventor". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2020-10-15.
  25. ^ Cousins, Sophie (23 November 2015). "How Do You Keep Vaccines Cool? Try Spacecraft Insulation". NPR.org. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  26. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  27. ^ "Intellectual Ventures' laser mosquito zapper lands key licensing deal". GeekWire. 2015-03-03. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  28. ^ "Artificial Intelligence Offers a Better Way to Diagnose Malaria". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  29. ^ "IV's Global Good Fund: A Legacy of Impact Invention". Intellectual Ventures. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
  30. ^ "Kymeta Company History". Archived from the original on 2015-10-09.
  31. ^ "About TerraPower | TerraPower". terrapower.com. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
  32. ^ "Evolv". www.intellectualventures.com. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  33. ^ "About Us | Echodyne". echodyne.com. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
  34. ^ Roberts, Jeff John (October 3, 2016). "Here's Why Software Patents Are in Peril After the Intellectual Ventures Ruling". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved 5 October 2016.
  35. ^ "When Patents Attack! | This American Life". This American Life. 22 July 2011. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  36. ^ Varchaver, Nicholas (July 10, 2006). "Who's afraid of Nathan Myhrvold?". Fortune.
  37. ^ Sharma, Amol; Clark, Don (September 17, 2008). "Tech Guru Riles the Industry By Seeking Huge Patent Fees" (PDF). The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 1, 2009.
  38. ^ United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (September 30, 2016). "Intellectual Ventures v. Symantec, case 2015-1769" (PDF). Retrieved 5 October 2016.
  39. ^ "Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures Using Over 1,000 Shell Companies To Hide Patent Shakedown"
  40. ^ "When Patents Attack". NPR.org. 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2011-07-28. Alex Blumberg, NPR, July 22, 2011
  41. ^ When Patents Attack!. This American Life. Retrieved on 2013-08-16.
  42. ^ Sacca, Chris (April 5, 1994). "When Patents Attack". This American Life (Interview). Retrieved March 30, 2007. @48:44
  43. ^ "Intellectual Ventures registers PAC — Association Trends honors leading lobbyists — FMC adds Seyfert — Steyer's uphill battle". POLITICO. 21 February 2014. Retrieved 2016-06-16.

External links

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