Very recently, Uber announced its new patent purchasing program, which seeks to expedite the process of purchasing intellectual property. The open application window begins April 24 and closes May 23 of this year. During that time, Uber will likely be inundated with patent portfolios of all types and sizes, as the current patent owners propose a simple price that Uber can then take or walk away from.
The idea behind this type of buying frenzy is to cut down on the long and complicated process of buying and selling patents. It’s true that, rather than seeking out the intellectual property that could support their corporate strategy and drive the company forward, they instead have patent owners knocking on their doors.
It’s easy to believe this type of purchasing program could cut down on the time it takes to purchase the patents, but what about evaluating the portfolios that come their way?
Patent Review Process
The process of reviewing hundreds or thousands of patents can be slow and arduous. Each patent could have hundreds of pages to review, which can cause quite the backlog when there is a stack of portfolios waiting. That backlog could lead to some pretty significant legal and competitive risks.
Without that review, however, which analyzes the competitor citation count, the relative importance of the patent in relation to your competitors, the breadth and structure of the claims, and even other members within the patent family, you’ll be relying entirely on hunches and guessing.
A Real-Life Scenario
We recently worked with a large corporation out of Silicon Valley who had the chance to purchase several major patent portfolios. They did not have a defined process to analyze these portfolios, and as a result, they experienced a huge backlog.
While they were still slowly working their way through over 450 portfolios, one of their competitors purchased one of the portfolios out from under them. That competitor then asserted an infringement claim based on the patents within the portfolio they had purchased—one our client never got around to investigating.
How could they possibly know, though? With such an arduous process for analyzing patent portfolios, it could have happened to anyone, right? Even Uber, once they open their program to brokers selling patents?
Well, not necessarily.
How iScore Works
What if, instead of months of slogging through 450 patent portfolios, our client had been able to analyze the whole of their intellectual property offers within a couple of weeks? The iScore patent portfolio analysis makes that possible.
Those data points a company needs to make a decision on the purchase of a patent, iScore presents them in an easy-to-read format that covers all the bases. Several layers of information are covered, including patents that cite the intellectual property in question. We then include patents that cite the patents that cite your patents. Two levels deep, giving you the most robust view possible.
We also score the breadth of the patent claim, as well as the structure. You’ll know if the terms of the patent in question are broad or narrow, and if you’re likely to end up in litigation over any structural flaws in the language. We even show you any noun phrases within the patent that aren’t covered in the specification, which fully demonstrates the stability of the patent you hope to buy.
Patents that score above your stated threshold will be highlighted and sorted for you to review. Other portfolios will be rated in relation to any portfolios you’ve viewed, so you know where to look next.
We do all of this in a fraction of the time traditional analysis takes. If Uber ends up with thousands of patents, iScore can get them sorted and analyzed within forty-eight hours.
If you’re also working with large numbers of patents portfolios, you may also find iScore useful. How can you establish the value if your intellectual property if you haven’t analyzed the patents in your portfolio? How can you drive your corporate strategy if you’re unaware of your current intellectual property values?
Reach out to IPVision if you’d like to learn more about iScore. We’d love to offer you a free demonstration of this powerful tool.
