Patent Firm Woos Inventors

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net has an article up discussing a new way to win the patent race; hook up with the inventors." From the article: "'They are more concept type of patents. It is a very blue sky kind of thing,' Langer said of the patents that Intellectual Ventures is trying to develop. By contrast, the type of patents that Langer continues to file on his own are typically based on several years of lab research and targeted at very specific ideas, he said. Other researchers working with the firm include Eric Leuthardt, a neurosurgeon with St. Louis' Washington University, and Muriel Ishikawa, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "

Comments

Why stop there?

[USSJoin]

I mean, why stop with just the inventors? If you truly want to get rich and be happy, I suggest you hook up with as many people as possible.

Taking a place in the value chain...

[csorice7]

While Intellectual Venture isn't playing its cards out yet, there are rumblings that even insiders at the company aren't quite sure yet whether the best path for what they're developing will be through new companies (as start ups) or in selling their portfolios (e.g. Ocean Tomo's recent auction).

It's an interesting challenge really, companies make lots of money from their engineers/technical staffs while those same companies are 'globalizing' their staffs thus releasing the workers from any ties back to those companies. Nathan is really tapping into this as an advantage (for himself, of course).

While playing the patent as a game, and creating useless patents, shouldn't be a goal, I wonder just how long it will be before all of these cool 2.0 collaboration tools and an open, innovative community figures out that there's a way to be a part of the value chain and not just at the end as a consumer.

(hint, hint...)