Posts Tagged: "Unicorns"

While patent portfolios are entering the market other patent portfolios continue to leave the market having been purchased. Asking prices seem to have also reached an equilibrium point, according to Kent Richardson of the ROL Group. There are buyers on the market looking for good portfolios, both tech companies who themselves have thin patent portfolios who are looking to back-fill their portfolios. Some non-practicing entities that had previously left the market have also started to come back as buyers over the last 12 to 18 months, at least kicking tires and strategically acquiring where the assets are strong and the price is right.

AppDynamics is an example of what is known in the venture capital world as a “unicorn,” a start-up company which reaches a valuation that exceeds $1 billion. In early November, IPWatchdog ran an article describing that nearly one-third of unicorns had no intellectual property assets. Thanks to the patent portfolio analysis tools available through Innography, we can see that this start-up actually holds a portfolio of 9 U.S. patents and 22 patent applications. While a 9 patent portfolio is not by any means a large portfolio, particularly given the lofty $1.9 billion valuation, we thought it might be interesting to take a look under the hood to see what a unicorn with patents has for a patent portfolio.

From tech developers trying to take a stand against tech-savvy terrorists to a pair of highly anticipated initial public offerings of stock for tech start-ups, there’s been plenty of news to cover in recent days. We also take a little time to explore research at an American university which has led to the world’s first-ever “freeze ray” laser technology.

Topping the list of US Unicorns (a pre-exit startup with a valuation exceeding $1 billion) are high flyers like Uber at $51 billion and Airbnb at $25.5 billion, followed by companies that are mostly concentrated in three industries: Consumer Internet, E-commerce and Software. Overall, we found out that 30% of US Unicorns have no US patent assets at all! About 62% of US Unicorns have only 10 or less (issued and pending) US patents in their name; these companies account for more than $157 billion in collective valuation and $25 billion in combined funding.