Gary K. Michelson Inventions Information

Gary K. Michelson (born January 14, 1949) is an American billionaire businessman, orthopedic spinal surgeon, inventor, and philanthropist.

Michelson and his three brothers were raised by his mother and grandmother. He attended Central High School of Philadelphia, Temple University and Hahnemann Medical College of Drexel University and completed medical residency in orthopedic surgery at Hahnemann Medical Hospital, before completing fellowship training in spinal surgery at St. Luke’s Medical Center in a joint program between Baylor University and the University of Texas. He was a practicing spinal surgeon for over 25 years before retiring from private practice to focus on philanthropy.

He is of Jewish heritage.

Seeing the low success rates associated with spinal surgery procedures on the market during his early career, he developed new technology, creating implants, instruments and procedures that enabled spinal surgeons to manage more spinal ailments. Implanted globally in millions of patients, "Michelson Devices" have made spinal surgery effective and reliable by decreasing the blood loss, incision size, risks and complications, hospital stay and overall costs compared to earlier procedures. He has over 340 U.S. Patents on instruments, methods and devices for advances in spinal and orthopedic surgery and over 950 issued or pending patents worldwide for instruments, operative procedures, and medical devices related to the treatment of spinal disorders.

In 2005, Michelson sold many of his spine related patents to Medtronic for over $1 billion, placing him on the Forbes 400 list where he has since remained. A legal battle with Medtronic over the origins of the patents preceded the sale. Michelson cross-filed in response to Medtronic's suit and was awarded financial damages for both lawsuits by the jury. The legal defense against Medtronic's suit established a major legal precedent in 2004, governing who bears the cost of pre-trial discovery of electronic evidence.

Michelson announced his intent to launch a medical philanthropic venture in a 2005 New York Times article. Founded in 1995, The Gary Karlin Michelson, M.D. Charitable Foundation, Inc. was renamed the Michelson Medical Research Foundation in 2005. The nonprofit does not accept donations.

After reading an article written by Sabin Vaccine Institute President Peter Hotez published in the Los Angeles Times, Michelson became one of the principal supporters of the Institute's fight against neglected tropical diseases, giving birth to the Michelson Neglected Disease Vaccine Initiative. Michelson said he "felt compelled to support efforts to develop a vaccine against the four most devastating parasitic worm infections because more than one billion innocent people, many of them small children, are unnecessarily plagued by these neglected diseases."

Michelson created the Twenty Million Minds Foundation, originally a comprehensive library of higher education textbooks in an open education platform and now an education startup incubator, and the Found Animals Foundation, a 501(c)(3) private operating foundation dedicated to animal welfare.

Found Animals provides no cost spay and neuter services to low income households, a grant program supporting spay/neuter and surrender prevention programs, a kitten foster program and the Saving Pets Challenge which raises money for animal welfare organizations nationwide.

In 2008, Michelson's Found Animals foundation launched the Michelson Prize and Grants in Reproductive Biology an international competition with a monetary prize aimed at solving the problem of pet overpopulation. Researchers from a wide variety of scientific fields took on the challenge of non-surgical pet sterilization. Recognizing that interested parties may not have access to funds the research and testing would require, the companion Michelson Grants in Reproductive Biology would provide limited funding for research. The Michelson Prize seeks to make sterilization accessible and affordable worldwide and aid developing countries.

In a program directly acknowledged by the L.A. Mayor’s office, Michelson’s Found Animals Foundation paid for the costs of anyone who would rescue a dog or cat scheduled for euthanasia.

In January 2014 it was announced that Michelson gifted $50 million to the University of Southern California for the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience. The venue opened its doors on November 1, 2017.

In February 2016, through his organization, the 20MM Michelson Foundation, Michelson released a variety of intellectual property tools including a series of videos which foreshadowed the publication of a proper intellectual property textbook.

Released on May 22, 2016, the free comprehensive textbook The Intangible Advantage: Understanding Intellectual Property in the New Economy, devoted to intellectual property topics and written specifically for non-lawyers and undergraduate students, includes a working explanation of patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

In a companion project, Michelson has created a complete undergraduate college course in Intellectual Property, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Intellectual Property, which has been taught at the USC Marshall School of Business via its Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and Santa Monica College since August 2017.

On October 30, 2017, via a kick-off event which took place at the University of Southern California, Leveraging Intellectual Property In Today's Knowledge Economy, the new Michelson Institute for Intellectual Property was announced. The new institute oversees the earlier Intangible Advantage IP course and provides resources for both educators and students of the program, it also offers the option of becoming an ambassador for the institute. On October 24, 2018, the Hacking IP: Considerations for Startups and Entrepreneurs seminar, the first event in a year-long multi-city program, took place in Downtown Los Angeles and featured such ambassadors as Nathan Khalil, Benjamin Kuo, Carmen Palafox and Thomas Peistrup.

On January 18, 2019, the California Spay and Neuter License Plate Fund, a non profit organization founded in 2010 by Judie Mancuso, Dr. Gary K. Michelson, actor Pierce Brosnan and his wife Keely Shaye Smith, announced an initial round of grants benefiting low income families in need of spay or neuter for their pet.

Those grants, funded by the sale of the California Pet Lover's License Plate whose artwork was authored by Pierce Brosnan, will see $330,000 dispersed in 2019. The plate, available since 2013 through the California Department of Motor Vehicles, has collected over 1.1 million dollars to date towards targeted spay and neuter programs.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Alya, and their three children.

In the August 2016 special issue of the Los Angeles Business Journal, Michelson was listed among the 500 most influential people in Los Angeles.

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