Science Business:
Patents may be at the root of scientific and technological advances and national prosperity, but it’s been tough to actually put a price tag on their value.
But 2 former Microsoft Corp. managers are trying to do just that. Edward Jung and Nathan Myhrvold started Intellectual Ventures, which they call an ‘invention capital’ company, in Bellevue, WA, several years ago. It’s an IP bazaar where buyers can purchase patent portfolios to turn into products. By aggregating patents, Intellectual Ventures also aims to stimulate invention both in house and in the patents it buys or licenses from corporations, universities and others throughout the world.
Over time, it intends to market its ‘invention portfolio’ on a broad and non-exclusive basis through a variety of channels including spin-out companies.
‘There is a balkanization of the innovation supply,’ Edward Jung, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Intellectual Ventures, told an audience of technology transfer managers and investors recently at an IBF seminar at Boston University. ‘Now there is cross-institutional, global development.’
Jung said that in the Golden Age of invention in the past hundred years, a single genius like Edison could found multiple industries with his ideas. Now one person can’t hold everything necessary to do that in his or her head; it takes multiple people, often across multiple institutions or labs and geographies. And it’s become more expensive and complicated to fund complex new technologies.
Lessons learned from software…
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