Rethinking Wealth

BusinessWeek's July 3 cover story is "Inside Nathan Myhrvold's Mysterious New Idea Machine," which profiles the former Microsoft chief technology officer's Intellectual Ventures company in Bellevue:

His ambitious goal is to own the next generation of transformative technology in some of the world's fastest-growing industries. Over the past three years, Intellectual Ventures has held about 70 brainstorming sessions. The result: 500 patent applications in areas including optics, biotechnology, robotics, e-commerce, and mobile networking. "We think that if we specialize in invention, we can do it better than people who do it as a sideline," he says.

This article is as much about the growing business of investing in and controlling ideas as it is about Myhrvold. Intellectual Ventures is pretty stealthy in acquiring patents—using shell companies to shield its identity—and is seen by some as ruthless in its entreaties to acquire intellectual property, BusinessWeek says.

Despite the fact that Myhrvold's backers include some of the biggest companies in technology, he spends a lot of time criticizing them in public. The notion of tech heavyweights "stealing" from inventors is a theme that Myhrvold returned to repeatedly in a series of interviews with BusinessWeek. At many big computer and Internet companies, he says, there has long been a culture of intentionally infringing patents or turning a blind eye to potential infringement. "You have a set of people who are used to getting something for free, and they are some of the wealthiest companies on earth," he says, his voice rising in indignation as he steers his car through traffic on his way to one of his favorite Seattle restaurants. "I was there. I was in the meetings. This is they way this business thinks about it." In Myhrvold's eyes, the fact that so many large companies are blatant intellectual property rights infringers just means that there's more money to be squeezed from his patent portfolio.

Hmmm. Is he referring to Microsoft? And which restaurant ...