Posts Tagged: "Value analysis"

Alice has had an impact on software patents, but they still hold significant value. If your portfolio includes software patents, there will be times when you want to extract value from that portion of your portfolio. As with any patent, there are three key criteria that must be applied when determining value: is it being used, is its use economically significant, and can that use be proven. Join Gene Quinn for a discussion about how to unlock the value of software patents in light of Alice.

What causes operating companies to sell their patents? Our intuition tells us that patent sales take place when the seller is in financial distress or the company is underperforming. We asked ourselves whether data aligned with our intuition… 71% of the sales occurred when the seller underperformed the overall market by more than 5 percentage points.

Companies at the cutting edge of their industries have realized the immense value of their patent portfolios and are still trying to make the most of that value – but it is not easy. A semiconductor or electronics company can have tens of thousands of patents; finding the patents that are the most valuable is one of its biggest problems. These patents are needed to determine the strategy for patent sale, licensing or litigation, and without them the company is basically stuck and can’t move forward. The process is like sorting the grain from the chaff.

Over the past 18 months, our clients have begun to show greater interest in international patents (e.g. non-US). Increasing client interest in international patents corresponds with the general rise in importance of international patents (continuing ascension of the Chinese market, potential for unitary patent for Europe), more anti-patent owner decisions in the US, and greater patent litigation outside the US.…

An organization’s overall IP strategy should support business strategies and help increase the value of the company. IP strategy will be different depending on the business and market. Value is not always about how much money can be generated by patents. Companies may want to motivate employees; attract customers, attract business partners or investors; protect existing products and the ability to improve them in the future; block or intimidate the competition; license to improve market penetration, generate income or gain access to third-party technology; improve their return on investment, or generate income or savings through joint-ventures, mergers and acquisitions, or investing in start-ups, among other strategic IP goals. Truly valuable patents are rare. Studies show that fewer than 5% of patents in a typical technology patent portfolio are valuable. Finding these rare valuable patents in a large patent portfolio is a challenging task.

The reason it matters as to whether we patent folks can speak non-patent speak is that those who make the decisions about patent value, i.e., corporate C-Level and above, do not speak or grasp patent speak, and instead rely on our guidance to make informed judgments about business and capital commitments. We sadly cannot communicate (think Raj on Big Bang, in the early episodes, around females) and, worse, even if we could, we are not even in the meetings where the decisions are being made. Look at any Org chart: We are often kept at more than arms length by General Counsel or who ever it is that patent counsel report to – solid or dotted line. In short, our fate, and the fate of our life’s work, is being decided by others, without benefit of our thoughts. Tragic, and a real business mistake.

Intuitively, family size and diversity of international filings should be good indicators of value. We hypothesized that like independent claim count, the investment to produce a larger patent family and file international patents would correspond to greater value. However, we found the impact was less significant than even the word count of claim 1 – only a 10% contribution to the overall weighting.

We found that forward citations (later patents that cite the subject patent) were the most significant factor in identifying patents that were likely to be purchased. In fact, the patents that were sold—or even highlighted by brokers, e.g. the representative patent—in a brokered patent package exhibited an even more extreme number of forward citations than litigated patents.

Techniques for valuing intellectual property continue to develop, especially as access to information becomes easier and more efficient. The practice of valuing intellectual property has only been around for the past few decades, during which time the practice itself has grown and refined. The decision of which approach to use is generally based on four factors: (i) how unique is the asset; (ii) how much data is available and verifiable; (iii) what is the context, purpose or objective of the analysis; and (iv) the judgment of the analyst which (one would hope) is based on extensive earlier experience. In addition to the traditional methods used to value intellectual property, several alternative methods are available. Some are modifications of the orthodox approaches with which most are familiar, but many other choices exist to value these complex assets.

It has been several generations since Congress has enacted changes to the patent laws that gave greater rights to innovators, the Supreme Court today is reminiscent of Courts in the past that had never seen a patent that contained valid claims, and the Federal Circuit is infatuated with de novo review and willingness to rubber stamp invalidity decisions parroting the Supreme Court’s intellectually dishonest and logically inconsistent tests. In the wake of all of this uncertainty and outright vilification of inventors and the patent system, there are some in the licensing and monetization industry who are trying to bring meaningful financial innovations to the fore. For the foreseeable future, given the reality of a completely dysfunctional federal government and judges more interested in being legislators, we can hope that thought leaders with new patent monetization models can provide a solution that will keep innovators inventing and society benefitting from the fruits of their labors.