MENLO PARK, Calif. - GEOFF GOODFELLOW is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who came up with an idea that resulted in a $612.5 million payday. But he will never see a penny of it. He remains little known even in Silicon Valley and, perhaps most surprising, he doesn't really mind.

And herein lies one of the stranger tales about innovation and money in the world of technology.

A high-school dropout, Mr. Goodfellow had his light-bulb moment in 1982, when he came up with the idea of sending electronic mail messages wirelessly to a portable device -- like a BlackBerry. Only back then, there was no BlackBerry; his vision centered on pagers. He eventually did get financial backing to start a wireless e-mail service in the early 1990's, but it failed.

So, in 1998, he moved to Prague and bought a bar. While he was there, the BlackBerry did come along. Tending bar, he believed that everyone had forgotten that he had initially come up with the idea of wireless e-mail.

Almost everyone had, that is, except for James H. Wallace Jr., a Washington lawyer for one of the companies involved in a patent dispute over Mr. Goodfellow's invention.