Insights
Inventor Spotlight: Jim Brady
December 3, 2013
- Buzz
- Inventor Spotlight: Jim Brady
It’s a big world, but Jim Brady seeks to make it a little smaller through stronger connections between people and the things they care about. As founder and president of Earthcomber, Brady invented a navigation application, or “personal radar,” that allows users to set their location and then find nearby businesses, events or resources that could be interesting to them.
The need to protect his inventions led to another type of connection for Brady – a partnership with Intellectual Ventures. After trying to assert his patents on his own, he realized he didn’t have the legal clout to protect his invention and wasn’t on a level playing field with much bigger companies. “You’ve got to look at the stakes of the real world,” Brady said. “In my experience, it was a very frustrating lifestyle—I had this great invention, I could see the world using it and I couldn’t do anything about it. There seemed to be a real disconnect between developing a useful idea and benefiting from it.”
After partnering with IV, Brady made both a return for his investors and funded the next stage of Earthcomber’s growth.
Read more about Brady, including how his experience with IV helped him take his invention to the next level.
