Intellectual Ventures ranks among the top 50 patent filers internationally, and the company has generated over $1 billion in revenue since its founding in 2000.

Yet the Bellevue-based invention factory still hasn't capitalized on its most ambitious ideas, most of which offer surprisingly simple solutions to colossal problems.

Those concepts include a global cooling system to combat climate change, a hurricane suppressor, and a device that zaps bugs with laser beams. This is a company bent on saving the world, even if it's only from mosquito bites.

"We're not afraid of any problem," said Intellectual Ventures executive vice president Eben Frankenberg.

One of the most talked-about inventions the company is working on is its Stratoshield, a climate-reduction system that would use hoses suspended high in the sky to spray sulfer-bearing aerosol into the stratosphere.

In theory, this would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth and lower temperatures at the poles, where aerosol tends to migrate in the stratosphere. The effect would be similar to that of a major volcanic eruption, except with an on-off switch.

Another concept the company is working on is the Salter Sink, which aims to reduce the force of hurricanes by siphoning warm surface water to lower ocean depths, where water is cool. Stirring the ocean would theoretically eliminate some of the warm air that fuels cyclones.

Hurricanes and climate change have one thing in common: a widely held belief that greenhouse gases make them worse. This is where Intellectual Ventures draws some criticism.

Some see geoengineering as a threat to the carbon-reduction agenda. Frankenberg contends that the world needs a safety net in case environmental policies fail to save the day.

"Clearly policy is a key driver to our long-term global warming problems, but you're asking for huge social change to do that," he said. "Hopefully it will succeed, but if it doesn't, we'd hate to find out at the last minute that we put all our eggs in social change and cultural change, and it didn't pan out, and we didn't find scientific solutions to at least buy time."

Another concern from geoengineering critics is the potential for nations to act unilaterally in ways that involve global consequences.

As for the less-controversial idea of zapping bugs, Intellectual Ventures is developing a mechanism that detects the wingbeat frequency of mosquitos and then shoots them down with laser beams, a la President Reagan's proposed Star Wars system. A similar idea is to create a laser fence that terminates bugs trying to enter designated areas.

These devices could be used to eradicate malaria or help farmers combat pests without the use of chemicals.

Frankenberg said he expects the first blockbuster breakthrough for Intellectual Ventures to come by way of its Terra Power nuclear reactor, designed to generate massive amounts of energy with small quantities of recycled nuclear waste.

"Just based on the amount of depleted uranium sitting around the U.S. right now, you could power at least the U.S. for about a thousand years at current rates of consumption," he said.

The hope is that Terra Power would eliminate the need for uranium mining and enrichment while solving the problem of nuclear proliferation.

MIT Technology Review selected this invention as one of its 10 Emerging Technologies of 2009.

Intellectual Ventures holds regular brainstorming sessions to generate new ideas. With over 600 cross-disciplinary employees, there's no lack of brain power.

Some of the more recent concepts under development include self-sterlizing surgical tools and a spiral biopsy needle that would avoid damage to key parts of the brain.

The company is also working on a cloaking device that would use computer chips to make objects invisible by bending light.

This article was originally published in the Bellevue Reporter on January 11, 2010.