Patent Law

What Price IP?

By Stephen Albainy-Jenei

Planet Eureka!

In the category of solutions looking for problems to solve, Planet Eureka! is a new on-line marketplace for patents and other intellectual property rights by Eureka Ranch Technologies in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Planet Eureka! Offers the USA National Innovation Marketplace as a way to bring together buyers and sellers of intellectual property. The Marketplace offers a place where inventors, patent holders, and intellectual property owners can post ideas in search of partners, buyers, and licensees.

Access is free to sellers and buyers but future plans include charging for consulting and other services. This site is from Doug Hall of American Inventor infamy.

InnoCentive

Another site, InnoCentive, provides a way for companies, nonprofits, and government agencies looking for solutions to problems to find the people and organizations that have answers. Charges $15,000 to post a problem as well as 40% commission on amount paid to the solution provider.

InnoCentive’s Open Innovation community is a way to get large numbers of members to try to solve some of the problems facing the world today. Those who are successful can win cash awards of up to $1,000,000 for solutions to Challenges. The site is a spin-off of Eli Lilly.

WikiPatents Community

Yet another patent marketplace is WikiPatents Community, which claims to contribute to the US patent system by reviewing issued patents and pending patent applications. WikiPatents features a wiki-like interface to review, rate, and discuss patents — plus free patent PDF downloads, file histories, and advanced patent searching.

The site also offers WikiPatents Marketplace, where companies can list patents for sale. IP is listed using various package deals ranging from $89/month to $1999/year.

What’s not clear is how members are able to vote on the value of any particular invention. The numbers for estimated value, royalty rate, market share and market size seem to be pulled from thin air. My favorite is U.S. Patent 7,095,126, entitled “Internal energy generating power source,” which claims:

1. A system for generating energy such that a portion of the generated energy supplies power to the system that generated the energy comprising: an electric motor capable of producing electric energy; a power source for supplying an initial amount of power to said electric motor; an alternator power source connected to said initial power source and said electric motor for continuously supplying power to said electric motor; a first inverter system connected to said electric motor, said inverter having an input through which said inverter system receives energy produced by said electric motor, said first inverter system also having one output through which said first inventor supplies power back to said electric motor to supply said electric motor with power; a load connected to said first inverter system via an inverter system output to alter the electric current traveling from said first inverter system such that the current feeding into the electric motor 30 is not purely inductive.

I think I’ve seen this perpetual motion machine before. Expect many of these to show up on Geekologie.

Full post as published by Patent Baristas on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).