Patent metrics and IP strategy for early-stage and growth stage companies are the topics of discussion on May 21st at a panel moderated by IPVision's Alex Butler during the upcoming Licensing Executives Society (LES) Spring Meeting in Boston on May 21.
The panel will include multiple perspectives of how serial entrepreneurs, investors, and management assess when and how to craft their IP strategies and the signals that those strategies provide to future results. IPVision's published article on the correlation between high quality patent positions and successful exit in Intellectual Asset Management Magazine (as a proxy for investment success) provides additional information on how IP can provide a leading indicator of management's ability to deliver value.
Investors and technology experts intuitively 'know' that developing a proactive IP strategy and efficiently and cost-effectively understanding the patent landscape within their industry inform critical decisions across a spectrum of activities, including considering investments, alliance discussions and the important choices of what to patent, or disclose, as they commercialize technologies.
Moving from this known need to demonstrably incorporating an IP perspective into product development, innovation processes, and crafting protected freedom to operate is a critical skill. Developing and observing well-positioned, high-quality IP positions is one measurable indicator of this skill.
Increasingly, management and investors are leveraging key indicators and patent benchmarks of other successful firms and past investments, to help inform strategies and tactics. If used appropriately, these same measurements can provide important signals to how successfully companies and management teams are including an understanding of intellectual property rights within their business processes.
The LES Spring Meeting (http://lesusacanada.org) focuses upon the topics of innovation, entrepreneurship and technology commercialization and will bring together more than 400 technology executives, intellectual property experts and technology transfer leaders.