Curating a Portfolio

How Patent Pools Work

Patent pools and standards essential patents are the Holy Grail of intellectual property. Patent pools are sophisticated ways that companies can bring technology together, cross license them, and license that package of intellectual property to the market. For many major technologies, such as Bluetooth, MPEG, 3G, 4G, and even electric vehicle charging, companies have banded…

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IP Due Diligence Checklist

Due diligence is essential for any business deal, and IP due diligence is shockingly left out of the equation for most angel investors and venture capital investors. Due diligence is hard work. Doing it well will get your hands dirty. Introduction to IP Due Diligence Any due diligence exercise, especially IP due diligence, involves turning…

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Detectability is a Key Factor for Patent Value

Updated 16 Jan 2022. Patents Need to be Detectable. This may appear to be an obvious statement, but people pour money into patents where infringement simply cannot be detected. Here’s a case where undetectable software claims were thrown out of federal court. When looking at an invention (or an issued patent), one of the first…

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How to Find a Realistic Patent Value

(Updated 22 July 2023.) The biggest factor to determine a patent’s value: revenue. A realistic patent valuation can be determined using many of the same techniques used to value businesses. However, it all depends on whether someone is actively copying your invention. How to value a patent all depends on whether there is product in…

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The “Walking Malpractice Suit”

The Attorney/Client Relationship for Patent Attorneys has Some Weird Nuance. The fiduciary responsibility (and the fear of being sued for malpractice) is why attorneys explain everything in dreadful detail.  It is not just that they bill by the hour.  The attorneys are trying to lay all the options out on the table and make sure…

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HP CapShare: How a failed product yielded huge revenue

HP’s CapShare hand-held scanner is a great example of patents that come from problems solved on they way to the vision – not the vision itself. Patents can be vehicles for spinning out technologies. When any company is exploring a new space, they encounter problems that need to be solved.  In many cases, other companies…

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How long does it take to get a patent?

It takes, on average, 2-4 years to get a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. But, you can change the speed based on your filing strategy. The chart above shows how long a patent was pending for the patents that issued to Small Entities in the first quarter of 2021. The blue…

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Non-transitory storage media

If you have a patent claim with the term “non-transitory storage media” – you should find another patent attorney. The history of the “non-transitory storage media” claims. Who can you sue with a “non-transitory storage media” claim? Problems with the “non-transitory storage media” claims. What you can tell if your attorney uses “non-transitory storage media”…

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Do Startups Give Up On Their Patents?

Patent valuation can be inferred from how much effort an applicant puts into their patent.  One of the common criteria for the more sophisticated patent scoring algorithms is the number of continuation applications. Having a pending application in a patent family is a huge asset. A pending application allows you to create new patent claims…

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Webinar: IP Due Diligence in Two Questions

There are two questions to ask every time you are dealing with patents: Can you tell if someone infringes? How hard is it to design around your patent? With these two questions, you are 90% of the way there on IP due diligence. Here is my presentation to Band of Angels in October, 2020.

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