Posts Tagged: "patent portfolio"

An assignment indicates who owns an issued patent or pending patent application. They are registered with the USPTO and available for public inspection. There is a special type of assignment called a “security agreement”. A security agreement indicates that a patent owner has used its patents as collateral for a loan. The security agreement says that the lender will get ownership of the patent if the current patent owner defaults on the loan. The security agreement also restricts what the patent owner can do with its patent so that the value of the patent is preserved. A patent owner might be obligated, for example, to pay the maintenance fees for an issued patent. Once the loan is paid off, the security agreement is released. If the loan goes into default, however, the ownership of the patent is transferred to the lender.

The time has now come for Kodak to attempt to shed its non-strategic patents with the sale of roughly 10% of the overall Kodak patent portfolio.  Without an acceptable initial bid already in place Kodak will roll the dice and angle for an auction that would take place in early August 2012, assuming more than one bidder emerges.

Eastman Kodak Company reported that it was continuing its march forward toward becoming a profitable and sustainable digital company. A sustainable digital company? In order to achieve this goal Kodak will need to better leverage its intellectual property portfolio. How will Kodak seek to generate cash from its intellectual property portfolio? The company is shifting gears and is pursuing a plan to sell 10% of it is patent portfolio to attempt to raise cash to remain in business.

Now here is what really caught my attention about PARD, on November 13, 2009 the stock was trading at $7.58, and on Monday, November 16, 2009 it dropped like a rock to $1.83, where it has largely stayed in a trading range plus or minus since. So what happened? On November 16, 2009, PARD announced what they called a positive Phase 3 study of picoplatin for use to treat small cell lung cancer patients. Those treated with picoplatin had an 11% reduction in the risk of death compared to patients treated with current best practices, which was not a positive enough result to be statistically significant. As is often the case with companies like this in the biotech sector, bad news is devastating to a stock. It is also true that stocks in the biotech sector also do quite well on good news. Back in March 2009, PARD was trading at about $1.70 to $1.80 before running up to a high of $9.14. So could this positive Phase 2 news of picoplatin and colorectal cancer be the precursor to another run up?