- Patent auctions will do little to help independent inventors sell their patents
The NY Times is Wrong: Patent Auctions Do Not Provide Indendent Inventors with “Protection”
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 securitization as a model for raising capital and, if so, if the there will be a place for IP professionals in the process of valuing such IP. I recommend Neil's post to anyone who is interested in how IP assets might be leveraged to create opportunities outside of the usual protection of the IP owner's products and technology. Moreover, I agree with Neil's view that if IP is going to be a recognized as a means to raise capital, improvements have to be made in the way finance and IP professionals interact. Put simply,
Reality Check for Inventors: Most Corporations Will Not Give Your Idea a First Look. Here’s Some Reasons Why.
Many people assume that corporations will readily consider good ideas from external sources, presumably because from the outside it makes sense to do so. That is, why should a corporation spend the time and money to create something from scratch if someone else has invented a product or technology that is a good fit and can be acquired at a reasonable cost? Against this assumption, countless numbers of inventors have expended considerable time, money and hopes on patenting their inventions and submitting them to corporations for review.
The sad truth is that most of the money and efforts of these hopeful inventors are wasted. Few corporations today have policies that make it possible for their employees to gather unsolicited ideas from outside of their existing employee or supplier base. Ideas sent to the corporation by outside inventors rarely get reviewed for merit by the relevant business teams. Rather, after the inventor submitting the idea is
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 business idea. Typically, entrepreneurs and CEO's such as yourself will engage patent attorneys to build an IP portfolio that protects the start-up's technology and products to the fullest extent possible. The motivation for this effort and expense is, of course, to to protect your start-up's idea from use by others. As management of a start-up you may be seeking to build an ongoing business around the patented technology, but often the goal of building a solid patent portfolio is to make your business an attractive target for investment or acquisition by a larger company. I believe that