Intellectual Property Law

The Amazing Nathan Myhrvold

By Lee Gesmer

The history of science is full of ideas that several people had at the same time.

Link to the full article in The New Yorker, May 12, 2008 here.

Teaser:

Myhrvold started Microsoft?s research division, leaving, in 1999, with hundreds of millions. He is obsessed with aperiodic tile patterns. (Imagine a floor tiled in a pattern that never repeats.) When Myhrvold built his own house, on the shores of Lake Washington, outside Seattle?a vast, silvery hypermodernist structure described by his wife as the place in the sci-fi movie where the aliens live?he embedded some sixty aperiodic patterns in the walls, floors, and ceilings. His front garden is planted entirely with vegetation from the Mesozoic era. (?If the ?Jurassic Park? thing happens,? he says, ?this is where the dinosaurs will come to eat.?) One of the scholarly achievements he is proudest of is a paper he co-wrote proving that it was theoretically possible for sauropods?his favorite kind of dinosaur?to have snapped their tails back and forth faster than the speed of sound.

Of course, Mr. Myhrvold is not loved by all. Who is?

Full post as published by Mass Law Blog on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).