Nathan Myrhvold: Innovator or Intruder?

August 16, 2011 | By: mbeharry

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The rapid growth, change and expansion of software can create a gray area concerning the question of “who invented it first?”

It seems that the only way to make sure your idea is fully patented is to hire a patent litigation attorney, but is that really enough? Who’s to say that someone hasn’t already patented your idea? And most importantly, do inventors have the money to patent their ideas?

Helping Inventors?

Nathan Myrhvold served as Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft before co-founding Intellectual Ventures in 2000. The company, Myrhvold proclaims, is meant to “invest in inventors.”

The company’s goal is to pay inventors for patents, which it then congregates into an invention database for every type of technology anyone could imagine.

The question then becomes, is Myrhvold’s company helpful or harmful for inventors?

Ideally, Intellectual Ventures should be a helpful tool. If an inventor has an ingenious idea and a patent to protect it, but companies are still using his or her technology, then the inventor may not have the money or legal know-how to stop them.

Intellectual Ventures helps those inventors by buying their patent and then charging every company that tries to use it instead of leaving single inventors out to fend for themselves against huge corporations. Due to its giant portfolio of patents, Intellectual Ventures is now one of the top five patent holders in the U.S.

But, who’s to say that this technology is new? Or that Intellectual Ventures is being fair to each inventor?

Hurting Inventors?

Though Mryhvold’s company is supposedly meant to help inventors, many of the individuals and companies that have worked with Intellectual Ventures seem reluctant to comment.

The increased amount of emerging software, mixed with the ambiguity of which inventor invented what software before the other, and whether or not there was a patent involved makes for a lot of confusion.

Having a way to control patents could cut down on the cloudiness—or it could only add to it.

Controlling Patents

Mryhvold’s impulse to somehow control patents is a good one. There should be a more solid, simple and helpful way for inventors to take credit for and make money from their work. Intellectual Ventures, when operating efficiently, certainly seems like the best option.

However, Intellectual Ventures employs many patent attorneys and much of the company’s income comes from lawsuits filed against companies who use ‘new’ technology for which Intellectual Ventures already owns the patent.

Additionally, Intellectual Ventures may own patents that were already in existence or write patents with clever wording. In the publicized case of inventor Chris Crawford, who relied on Intellectual Ventures to sell his invention, the technology was created years before. The patent even claimed ownership for ideas that weren’t even part of Crawford’s invention.

In the ever-changing battle of software and invention recognition, it’s hard to tell if People like Nathan Mryhvold and companies like Intellectual Invention are good or bad for inventors.

Whether or not inventors want to become involved with selling their patent to companies, the race for ownership of ideas and technology is bound to only speed up.