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. The Gary Karlin Michelson, M.D. Charitable Foundation, Inc. was founded in 1995 and was later renamed the Michelson Medical Research Foundation in 2005. The nonprofit does not accept donations.

Also in 2005, Michelson launched the Found Animals Foundation, a 501(c)(3) private operating foundation dedicated to animal welfare.

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 might not have access to the funds that the research and testing would require, a companion organization, Michelson Grants in Reproductive Biology, provided limited funding for research. The Michelson Prize seeks to make sterilization accessible and affordable worldwide and aid developing countries.

In 2011, 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.

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 that foreshadowed the publication of a proper intellectual property textbook.

Michelson was a contributing author of the free comprehensive textbook The Intangible Advantage: Understanding Intellectual Property in the New Economy. Released on May 22, 2016, the textbook is devoted to intellectual property topics and was written specifically for non-lawyers and undergraduate students. It includes a working explanation of patents, copyrights and trademarks. In 2019, he presented as a guest speaker at The Future of Intellectual Property: Examining IP in a Changing World. In 2020, he presented as the keynote speaker at the third Intellectual Property Awareness Summit at UC Berkeley.

On October 30, 2017, at Leveraging Intellectual Property In Today’s Knowledge Economy, a kick-off event which took place at the University of Southern California, 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.

In 2017, Dr. Gary K. Michelson and Alya Michelson, through the MMRF and the Human Vaccines Project, launched Michelson Prizes, which dispense $150,000 awards to specifically support out-of-the-box, high risk, high return, medically relevant research by scientists under the age of 36. Dr. Michelson partnered with the Human Vaccine Project to judge the Researcher Competition. The 2020 Michelson Prizes were awarded to Dr. Danika Hill, research fellow at Australia’s Monash University, and Dr. Michael Birnbaum, assistant professor at MIT.

On October 24, 2018, the seminar, Hacking IP: Considerations for Startups and Entrepreneurs, 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.

In December 2018, Michelson appeared on the cover of CSQ C-Suite Quarterly Magazine and was awarded the Visionary of the Year Award in Philanthropy. The award ceremony took place in New York City on February 5, 2019.

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.