Rob Aronoff

The IP Professional community must find ways to work with Wall Street to help educate and protect the credibility of IP as an emerging asset class, and not allow IP assets to become cannon fodder for deals or the investment “flavor of the month.” The InterDigital-Intel deal can be viewed as call to arms. Wall Street will ultimately choose to enlist or not credible transaction analysis. In most trades there are winners, and sometimes losers. Smart IP bankers will choose to do the homework and not be so quick to determine who, in fact, the beneficial parties are. Given the inefficiencies inherent in the patent marketplace, it is quite possible for a liquidity event like a patent transaction to have multiple winners. Reminding the financial community of this will not be easy.