"if he had effectively monetized it" is very loose language, esp. if it tells you if you had spent (say) $10m it could be worth $500m. But you don't monetize individual patents, you build software.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5749081A/en

I don’t build software, not for many years. And I have monetized individual patents.

Folks, we are just having fun here. Making fun of me. But not for making HN comments that aren’t as well written as you think they should be. For having created, owned, and then let slip through my hands, a patent that ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini say may have been worth a billion dollars. So what if the estimate is off by 100x, so I let $10M slip through my fingers. It is still ridiculous and wild. But seriously who cares about the language I use to describe the thing.