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Bill Gates Backs Intellectual Ventures, Widely Branded a 'Patent Troll'
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Bill Gates is an investor in and contributor to Intellectual Ventures, the patent-licensing firm founded in 2000 by former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold. Gates has taken part in the firm's 'invention sessions,' and his name appears on resulting patent applications. Intellectual Ventures amassed tens of thousands of patents without making products of its own and earned hundreds of millions of dollars by demanding licensing fees from other companies — a model critics, including a widely heard 2011 'This American Life' investigation, condemned as that of a 'patent troll' that taxes innovation. Intellectual Ventures rejected the characterization, saying it pays inventors and runs a legitimate market for ideas. The venture tied one of the world's richest men to a business many technologists revile.
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