Andrew Ramer's new company: Marqera

Andy Ramer, the well-known ex-leader of Ocean Tomo auctions has formed a new company, called Marqera. He is joined by ex-colleagues Nicole D'Hondt, David O'Steen from Ocean Tomo and Joe Kessler, Sharon Dayan from Global Technology Transfer (GTT).

The underlying theme of the company's services can perhaps be sensed from the following snippet from their website:

"For years, companies have been investing billions of dollars in creating, prosecuting, and maintaining their patent portfolios. They are now at a point where these portfolios must generate revenue and a return on that investment, through sale, license, or other creative structure."

Whether the company is successful in creating a new platform of commercialization of IP remains to be seen. This blog wishes Marqera all the best!

Pluritas Conducting a Patent Auction of GPS related IP

Pluritas did a press release (click here) about an auction of a patent portfolio related to GPS emergency locator patents. The broker seems to have discovered quite a good portfolio.

My team at work invested about 18 months researching and building a methodology for evaluation of patents and patent portfolios. The table below shows the scores of the portfolio being auctioned (best guess using assignee/inventor searches, as the press release did not mention the patent numbers)

4 of the 5 US patents are 98th percentile or higher among comparable patents with exceptionally high scores.

It remains to be seen how much value does this portfolio fetch. Guess we will know in a few weeks time.

Patent Monetization: Why even bother?

That IP in general and patents in specific occupy a significant importance is much talked about. How much is generally a question that is avoided. The figure above, based on Ocean Tomo's research, shows that Intangible Assets comprised about 75% of the market capitalization of S&P 500 companies. About 22.5% of the total market cap has been attributed to patents which is about 1/3 of all value attributable to Intangible Assets.

In an economy where about 1/5th of the valuation that most companies, especially those in 'knowledge' based industries, derive is due to patents - their monetization is not just a matter of choice anymore. It is a matter of shareholder responsibility.