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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. Its business model focuses on buying patents and aggregating those patents into a large
patent portfolio A patent portfolio is a collection of patents owned by a single entity, such as an individual or corporation. The patents may be related or unrelated. Patent applications may also be regarded as included in a patent portfolio. The monetary benefit ...
and licensing these patents to third parties. The company has been described as the country's largest and most notorious patent trolling company, the ultimate patent troll, and the most hated company in tech. In 2009, the firm launched a prototyping and research laboratory, Intellectual Ventures Lab, which attracted media controversy when the book ''
SuperFreakonomics ''SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance'' is the second non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and ''The New York Times'' journalist Stephen J. Dub ...
'' described its ideas for reducing global climate change. The firm also collaborates on humanitarian projects through its Global Good program.


Overview

In 2000, Intellectual Ventures was founded as a private partnership by Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung of
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...
, later joined by co-founders Peter Detkin of
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...
, and Gregory Gorder of
Perkins Coie Perkins Coie is an American multinational law firm headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1912, it is recognized as an Am Law 50 firm. It is the largest law firm headquartered in the Pacific Northwest and has 20 offices across the ...
. The Intellectual Ventures Management Company is owned 40% Nathan Myhrvold, 20% Peter Detkin, 20% Gregory Gorder and 20% Edward Jung. They reportedly have raised over $5.5 billion from many large companies including
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...
,
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...
,
Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
,
Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finlan ...
,
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...
,
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
,
Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...
,
American Express American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation specialized in payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The company was found ...
,
Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for '' mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of ...
,
SAP Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separ ...
,
Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
, and
eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...
, plus investment firms such as
Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
,
Hewlett Foundation The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, commonly known as the Hewlett Foundation, is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Redington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1966. The Hewlett Foundation ...
, Mayo Clinic, and
Charles River Ventures Charles River Ventures (CRV) is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in technology. The firm was founded in 1970 to commercialize research that came out of MIT. Its name comes from the Charles River. History The firm has ra ...
. In December 2013, the firm released a list of approximately 33,000 of the nearly 40,000 assets in their monetization program. Licenses to patents are obtained through investment and royalties. In March 2009, the firm announced expansion into China, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore to build partnerships with scientists and institutions in Asia.


Investment funds

The company operates three primary investment funds: * 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
Robert Langer Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng (born August 29, 1948) is an American chemical engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, inventor and one of the twelve Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was formerly the Germesh ...
of MIT,
Leroy Hood Leroy "Lee" Edward Hood (born October 10, 1938) is an American biologist who has served on the faculties at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Washington. Hood has developed ground-breaking scientific instrume ...
of the Institute for Systems Biology, Ed Harlow of Harvard Medical School, Bran Ferren and Danny Hillis of Applied Minds, and Sir John Pendry of Imperial College. The ''
Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, wh ...
'' 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. Mark Harris, The Sunday Times, May 16, 2010 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, a mosquito-targeting laser, and a series of computer models of infectious disease. 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
global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in a broader sense also includes ...
proposes that the global climate can be regulated by geo-engineering of a stratoshield based upon patented technology from the company. The chapter has been criticized by some economists and climate science experts who say it contains numerous misleading statements and discredited arguments, including this presentation of geoengineering as a replacement for CO2 emissions reduction. Among the critics are
Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was t ...
, Brad DeLong, ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...
'', and ''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econ ...
''. Elizabeth Kolbert, a science writer for ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...
'' who has written extensively on global warming, contends that "just about everything they
evitt and Dubner The surname Evatt is British, with Norman French roots. Modern spelling deviations include ''Evatte,'' ''Evett,'' ''Evettes,'' ''Evitt'', ''Evitts,'' ''Evitte,'' and ''Evittes.'' Early British spellings of this surname did not include the ''doub ...
have to say on the topic is, factually speaking, wrong." In response, Levitt and Dubner have stated on their ''Freakonomics'' blog that global warming is
man-made Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring nature, naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotations Artific ...
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. 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.


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: Arktek, a passive vaccine storage device that allows
vaccine A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified. ...
s to be transported to parts of the world that lack reliable refrigeration. It uses a small amount of ice for cooling and requires no external power supply, relying on extraordinary insulation. The device has been used to transport vaccines around the world, and Myhrvold believes the device may be useful for transporting organs. The firm produced a modified version of the Arktek to transport newly developed
Ebola Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after bec ...
vaccines to
Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...
and Guinea during the
2014 Ebola outbreak Fourteen or 14 may refer to: * 14 (number), the natural number following 13 and preceding 15 * one of the years 14 BC, AD 14, 1914, 2014 Music * 14th (band), a British electronic music duo * ''14'' (David Garrett album), 2013 *''14'', an unre ...
at the required much colder temperature. The Photonic Fence is a device to identify and kill mosquitos with lasers to prevent malaria, suggested by Lowell Wood, a company researcher. The device uses a non-lethal laser to track insects and monitor their wing-beat frequency. If it detects a female mosquito, the device fires a kill laser. It has an effective range of 100 feet and can purportedly kill up to 100 mosquitoes per second. The device has not yet been mass-produced,. The Autoscope uses artificial intelligence to diagnose
malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or deat ...
. The device has been field-tested in Thailand and reportedly outperformed the average human diagnostician. It too is not yet scheduled for mass-production. Mazzi is a milk jug designed for farmers in the developing world. The firm partnered with Heifer International to design the jug, which is cheap, sturdy, and easy to clean with features a funnel that results in decreased spillage. In mid-2020, Global Good was dismantled, with some of its components (most notably the Institute for Disease Modeling) transitioning into the
Gates Foundation The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was ...
, and some evolving into new entities under Gates Ventures.


Companies created

Intellectual Ventures has created a number of independent companies to bring its discoveries to mass market. Examples include
Kymeta Kymeta Corporation is a satellite communications company based in the United States. It was founded in August 2012 after spinning out from Intellectual Ventures and manufactures software-enabled, meta-materials based electronic beamforming anten ...
, a satellite technology company, TerraPower, which seeks to improve nuclear power, Evolv, which applies metamaterials to imaging, and Echodyne, a
metamaterial A metamaterial (from the Greek word μετά ''meta'', meaning "beyond" or "after", and the Latin word ''materia'', meaning "matter" or "material") is any material engineered to have a property that is not found in naturally occurring materials. ...
s-based radar communications company.


Controversy

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 Tying may refer to: * Fly tying, process of producing an artificial fly * Knot tying, techniques of fastening ropes * Tying (commerce), making customer buy one thing to get another *tying or knotting, part of canine reproduction See also * Tie (d ...
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." Intellectual Ventures' purchased patents have largely been kept secret, though press releases with
Telcordia iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...
and Transmeta indicated some or all of their patent portfolios were sold to the company. It reports that its purchasing activity as of spring 2010 has sent $350 million to individual inventors, and $848 million to small and medium size enterprises as well as returning "approximately $1 billion" to investors before filing any lawsuits, but IV's assistance to individual inventors has been contested. Investigative journalism suggests that the company makes most of its income from lawsuits and licensing of already-existing inventions, rather than from its own innovation. Intellectual Ventures has been described as a "patent troll" by Shane Robison, CTO of
Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
and others, allegedly 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 licenses to the Intellectual Ventures portfolio. On December 8, 2010, in its 10th year of operations, Intellectual Ventures filed its first lawsuit, accusing
Check Point Check Point is an American-Israeli multinational provider of software and combined hardware and software products for IT security, including network security, endpoint security, cloud security, mobile security, data security and security ma ...
,
McAfee McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American global computer security software company head ...
,
Symantec Symantec may refer to: *An American consumer software company now known as Gen Digital Inc. *A brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Inc. Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier ...
,
Trend Micro is an American-Japanese multinational cyber security software company with global headquarters in Tokyo, Japan and Irving, Texas, United State.Other regional headquarters and R&D centers are located around East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, an ...
, Elpida,
Hynix SK hynix Inc. is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. Hynix is the world's second-largest memory chipmaker (after Samsung Electronics) and the world's third-largest semiconductor company. ...
,
Altera Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015. The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-ra ...
, Lattice and
Microsemi Microsemi Corporation was an Aliso Viejo, California-based provider of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets. In February 2018, it was announced that Chandler, Arizona-bas ...
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". The company has been accused of hiding behind shell companies for earlier lawsuits, an accusation consistent with the findings of NPR's
Planet Money ''Planet Money'' is an American podcast and blog produced by NPR. Using "creative and entertaining" dialogue and narrative, ''Planet Money'' claims to be "The Economy Explained." History The podcast was created by Alex Blumberg and Adam Davi ...
in July 2011. The episode, which also aired as the ''
This American Life ''This American Life'' (''TAL'') is an American monthly hour-long radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internatio ...
'' episode "When Patents Attack",When Patents Attack!
This American Life. Retrieved on 2013-08-16.
was dedicated to software patents, prominently featuring Intellectual Ventures. It includes sources accusing Intellectual Ventures of pursuing a strategy encouraging
mutually assured destruction Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would cause the ...
, including Chris Sacca calling Myhrvold's argument that Intellectual Ventures is offering protection from lawsuits in a " mafia-style shakedown". 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." Intellectual Ventures staff are active in lobbying and testifying in court on United States patent policy.


References


External links


Intellectual Ventures
– main website {{Authority control Patent monetization companies of the United States Financial services companies established in 2000 Companies based in Bellevue, Washington Venture capital firms of the United States Research and development in the United States