In our last Penny Wise and Pound Foolish article, we investigated corporations that spent years building massive patent portfolios for the purpose of licensing programs. IBM led the way through the nineties, eventually amassing over 22,000 patents within the decade. Of course, with up to $1 billion in revenue each year solely from licensing deals, IBM definitely makes a case for piling up the patents like poker chips.
Categories: Patent Cost, IP Monetization
Over the course of twenty years, the list of the 10 largest companies has changed drastically due to the value of intangible assets, such as intellectual property. Where once companies like ExxonMobil, General Electric, and Walmart reigned supreme, we now see companies like Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet (Google) at the top of the charts. More than 84% of the S&P 500’s market cap is represented by intangible assets. That’s equal to more than $19 trillion.
Categories: IP Monetization
Making money from your intellectual property often brings to mind two things: creating innovative products that outsell competitors or selling the patents to someone else. Indeed, why hang onto IP that you don’t intend to use for your own products?
Categories: IP Monetization
The typical enterprise organization can hold thousands of patents, with dozens added each year. This intellectual property has the power to produce revenue for the company, create barriers to entry for competitors, and mitigate risks from other patent holders. Of course, patents also give the holder a temporary monopoly, during which time they can overtake competitors and gain tremendous market share.
This is the second in a series of posts about technology landscapes, also called patent landscapes. In the first post, Why I Hate the Phrase "Technology Landscape,” I point out that the phrase “technology landscape” is used to describe everything from a $1,000 offshore basic patent search to a $200k high-end consulting engagement with strategy consulting firms or a law firm billing by the hour.
A wise man once said, “Language gets in the way of communication.” In my experience, the lexicon of “technology landscape” or “patent technology landscape” gets in the way of making strategic and even tactical business decisions involving intellectual property and business strategy. That is why I hate the phrase “technology landscape” as applied to patents.
The first article in this series discussed the reasons for increased activity in Patent Portfolio Trafficking, i.e. patent portfolios offered for sale or license. The second article described how companies with Small Volumes of portfolios to evaluate were able to streamline their patent evaluation processes from weeks to days using a Metric Driven Approach. This article looks at companies that have more fully integrated patent analytics into their patent portfolio acquisition process.
IPVision, along with members of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty, hosted a live webinar on Wednesday, October 9 at 10:00 am PDT / 1:00 pm EDT that updated participants on the ongoing progress of joint research that will bring increased understanding of how strategic / operating companies make decisions related to patent transactions.
IPVision executive and advisory team member Joseph Hadzima is a featured speaker at this year's IP Business Congress in Boston.
Hadzima will discuss the changing face of the IP market.
From the IP Business Congress Program:
In hard times only the strong survive: the biggest innovators are the biggest winners. Investors, technology leaders and senior industry observers discuss how the market for IP assets is evolving and the implications for stakeholders of every kind
Investment opportunities
New players, perspectives and horizons
Monetisation and beyond
