Patent Law

Turning patents into money

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Michael Pierantozzi of iPotential: "Patent management used to be an afterhought. That's changing. There's been a transition from treating patents as legal assets to treating them as business assets." It's certainly not a new phenomenon, adds Pierantozzi. Executives have been warming to the notion of monetization for a decade or more. But the expense of shopping assets or conducting due diligence - which Pierantozzi says can run between $50,000 to $100,000 on a $1 million portfolio - is prohibitive. And advisers that can help facilitate a patent sale or companywide IP management strategy such as IPortfolio, ThinkFire Services USA Ltd., or the patent auction operator Ocean Tomo LLC are relatively new to the scene.

For his part, Pierantozzi has been knee-deep in IP management for years. He previously was a managing director in the IP licensing group at Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ), which as we've reported previously, was early to the table of IP monetization. In fact, the IPotential leadership team is stacked with former corporate heavyweights, including founder and chief executive Ron Epstein, who previously was director of licensing for Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC), and president Joe Chernesky, who was director of IP business for The Boeing Co. and held several roles in Intel's IP organization.

Hmmm, did the Wright Brothers or Chester Carlson view patents as "legal assets"?

Full post as published by IPBiz on April 27, 2009 (boomark / email).