How an F Student Became America’s Most Prolific Inventor

Intellectual Ventures is a notorious patent troll, one that routinely uses shell companies to obscure the extent of its abuse of the patent system. It's disappointing to see ignorant people in the press continue to naively conflate "filing lots of patents" with "inventing."

A piece like this that uncritically lionizes Lowell and Intellectual Ventures without even bothering to highlight or address the criticism frequently voiced against the organization feels uncomfortably one-sided if not deliberately misleading.

Quote "a device that can imbue medical gear with video­conferencing and data-transmission abilities so a patient can leave a hospital and use the machines at home".

Some of the patents mentioned sound trivial. It seems to me this guy is focused more on quantity than quality. Is he a borderline patent troll?

Reading tip: Use the page down key instead of mouse wheel. Will keep the moving artifacts to a minimum.

Off-topic: This article has clearly sacrificed too much readability for the "cool" factor.

Why is there always so much focus on the "F student turned inventor" trope. What purpose does it serve? It's definitely not the norm. I think that people identify with it because from their perspective it was like oh this guy was just naturally smart and he just didn't buy into the educational system which is why they had bad grades. Many people think the same of themselves in that way. The part that I feel always gets under reported or not digested by readers very well is the amount of work that the people usually had to put into their endeavors. Oftentimes the work was far more intensive than any education they could have received. I think the emphasis should always be on the work instead of what their grades were in high school or college. I guess that headline wouldn't sell though.

Terrible presentation on that site.