After many years of counseling small companies on how to license their technology to large companies as an IP attorney, the tables are now turned. My new role is as CEO of a startup company with breakthrough battery charging technology available for licensing. I am finding that many of the things I knew to be true [...]
Posts under ‘Investment Decisions’
Beware of Bogus Patent Analytics: Forward-Citation Analysis Leads to False Conclusions about Significance of Client’s Patent
Patent application filing and issuance data can be a useful tool to extract valuable competitive business information that is “hiding in plain sight.” For example, in industries where patents are viewed as pertinent for creating and protecting long term value, patent filing data can present a strong signal about where your competitors are investing their time and money in innovation [...]
An IP Strategist’s Economic Forecast for 2010: An Outsider’s View and How One Can Outperform the “Experts”
In remembrance of the 1 year anniversary of the Financial Meltdown, Forbes.com has included me in a list of bloggers asked to provide an economic forecast for 2010 and also to provide some insights as to what economic markers I use in my work. This is an interesting assignment for me: few who know me would consider [...]
IP Quality Must be a Key Feature in Any Financial Product Based on IP Assets
Neil Wilkof of the great IP Finance blog brought up a couple of interesting issues in his latest blog post entitled Securitization of IP: Urban Legend, or Playing Soon in a Theatre Near You? Specifically, he wonders if the desire for innovative (and not discredited) financial products today will result in the emergence of IP [...]
Start-up Entrepreneurs & CEO’s: If Your Goal is Investment or Acquisition, You are Probably Patenting the Wrong Things
Do you treat your patents as a fence or a tollbooth? If you wish for your start-up technology company to obtain investment from or acquisition by a bigger player, you had better understand the difference. Most start-up technology company entrepreneurs and CEO’s understand that patents can be key to establishing the value of a new [...]
50% of Venture Capital Investment is Lost: How Your Clients Can Improve These Odds by Using the Right Patent Analytics
THE SKINNY ON THE QUALITY OF VENTURE CAPITAL-RELATED INVESTMENT DECISIONS If you are a counselor of venture capital firms or entrepreneurs who owning start-up companies that are targets of venture capitalists, you might already be familiar with the high rate of failure associated with such investments. Nonetheless, you may be surprised to find out that [...]
The IP Zone: A New Concept for Introducing Needed Information and Efficiencies into the Patent Monetization Market
Many corporations and entrepreneurs today understand that patents are increasingly bought, sold and traded, just like many other assets. However, the patent monetization market is only just emerging and, as a result, few information sources exist today to assist patent owners in selling their patents. The nascent nature of the industry also means that most [...]
Proposal for a Reality-Based Methodology for Measurement of Corporate Intangible Asset Value
In recent years, financial analysts came to believe that intangible asset value forms an increasing aspect of overall corporate value. These experts generally agreed that intangible asset value made up at least 70 % of the total market cap of the average corporation, an increase of an estimated 20 % in 1975. Not surprisingly, however, [...]
Investors in the Green Economy: You Could Lose Your Investment in Green Innovators by Failing to Identify the Green Inventors that Came Before Them
With President-Elect Obama’s announcement that he will establish an “Apollo Project” to develop a Green Economy, there is no doubt that “the Green Technology train has left the station.” Indisputably, investors will start to invest heavily in companies that appear to possess commericializable Green Technology that will enter the marketplace as the US embraces the [...]
We’re Measuring the Wrong Things: Inventiveness and Patents Do Not Equal Innovation
Few things infuriate me more than supposed experts who make statements along the lines of “patents are critical to innovation.” I have avoided stating my views widely in this forum because I didn’t want to get into a contest of one upmanship with my patent lawyer peers. However, in the last couple of weeks, several [...]