Posts in Licensing

The greatest long-term threat to the U.S. patent system does not come from its professional opponents – those large businesses and their political allies who stand to profit from enfeebled patent rights. A deeper harm is caused by unscrupulous patent trolls who use extortionist “demand letters” to victimize small businesses. Yet even as damage caused by demand letters spreads, most legitimate patent licensors whose businesses depend upon continued legislative and public trust stand idly by, doing little or nothing to address it. Well-insulated within the patent industry’s cozy professional bubble, we are, in effect, fiddling like a modern-day Nero while innovation’s Rome burns.

Acknowledging that many of the problems facing the licensing industry was brought about due to bad actors dominating the discussion, Shaer explained that the absence of legitimate patent owners who license real technologies from the debate has also contributed. Rather than self regulating the industry, legitimate patent owners and licensing entities have stayed in the background, which continues to contribute to the negative public perception of the patent system. “We are the first licensing company, to our knowledge, to publicly campaign against patent troll demand letters that we believe are undermining public confidence in the patent system,” Shaer explained.

The DRTV Product Summit is a one-day event that will be held on Wednesday, October 22, 2014 at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Inventors will be given the opportunity to pitch their products to representatives of the six (6) DRTV companies on one day in one location. The event is not open to all inventors. Over the past few years the event has grown and there has been significant interest in the inventor community. In order to be considered inventors must submit their inventions to be reviewed by a panel of referees. Thanks to an extended deadline, submissions are now due no later than Friday, October 3, 2014.

Debates over economic fairness, the appropriate role of government in the economy and the value of the patent system spill over into our world. One factor that made the enactment of Bayh-Dole so difficult was the feeling in the 60’s and 70’s that patents were inherently bad. Intellectual property used to fall under the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopolies when I joined the Judiciary Committee staff– which says much on how patents were viewed. It took the wakeup call of losing our traditional lead in innovation to Japan and Germany to start reversing this trend.

While the DRTV Product Summit is geared toward inventors with largely plug and play products, it is still nevertheless aimed at giving everyday inventors an opportunity. The major benefit to inventors selected is that they can present to serious companies that are looking for new products in one day in one location. The deadline for submissions has to be weeks in advance of the event so that proper time can be spent vetting the inventions and inviting the inventors. No guarantee of consideration can be extended to those who submit after September 30, 2014.

She thought about a new approach to get these patents off the shelf: launching an international competition for teams to develop business plans for a start-up company around some of the most promising inventions… Eleven new companies have already been formed, five have completed their licensing negotiations with NIH, most of the new companies have secured venture funding, several have letters of intent from large drug companies and one team landed an additional $700K after winning a separate business plan competition.

“Our promise to the small or medium size operating company is we will give them a simple and affordable way to understand the patent environment they’re doing business in, to find the hundred patents that are most statistically relevant to their product line. And provide them with either a license or a warranty that allows them to reduce the risk they’re facing on those one hundred patents. And if you’re a small or medium size operating company who is coming to understand that every business needs an IP strategy these days as IP becomes a more important part of markets and the economy then this is a very affordable and simple entry level strategy for understanding and dealing with patent risk. And that puts you in a much better position arguably than the position that you’re in right now which is you know very little about the risk you’re facing and you can do nothing about it.”

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.com. Walker, with over 700 patents and pending patent applications, is one of the most prolific living inventors in the world. He is embarking on the monumental task to commoditize patent licenses in a way that streamlines the process, keeps costs down, maximizes the number of licenses and charges a low flat fee. A daunting task no doubt, but his methodology is unique and seems to me to be more likely to succeed than any other efforts, which really bear no resemblance to the Patent Properties model. Still, to call the task difficult is an understatement, but if anyone has the ability to pull it off it would be Jay Walker.

Simply stated, Jay Walker is one of America’s best-known business inventors and entrepreneurs… Recently I had the opportunity to interview Walker, along with the CEO of Patent Properties Jon Ellenthal. While nothing was ruled out of bounds for the interview we spent much of our time discussing his attempt to create a no-fault patent licensing system that will help innovators monetize patents through a uniform licensing regime that offers a variety of peripheral benefits to those who take licenses… In this interview with Jay Walker we discuss his effort to monetize patents, patent trolls, patent reform and the importance of patents in general.

Recently I visited a Congressional office with a friend who led technology transfer at a public institution located in a mid-level city not normally associated with innovation. By skillfully using the authorities of Bayh-Dole and the patent system combined with good business judgment the program was very successful in start up formation and licensing, making it a driver of the regional economy. The Congressional staff were effusive in their praise of the results, which are well known in the state, vowing to do everything they could to support continued success. However, just before the meeting my friend confided that their new leadership made it clear that they did not consider technology transfer a profession requiring special skills and experience. The staff that labored so long and hard building the program got the hint and was leaving. Luckily their achievement is recognized by other institutions that are happy to snap them up. Unfortunately, the economy of the area they left behind will pay a high price for this boneheaded mistake.

Jane Muir, AUTM President: “[U]niversities are not the next patent troll because at the end of the day, university tech transfer offices were put into place to ensure that the new discoveries that happen in the research laboratories ultimately get out into the marketplace by way of product and services that improve the human condition. The big difference is with patent trolls. They’re not interested in commercializing discoveries. They’re interested in using those patents to sue legitimate companies who do want to move those products into the market. From the commercialization standpoint that really is the fundamental difference. Patent trolls have no real interest in commercializing. Their interest is in litigating.”

IDRI granted license rights to its world-class vaccine adjuvants to Immune Design Corporation (IDC), which was established in Seattle in 2008 with a focus on cancer, allergies and certain infectious diseases. The royalties and other funds received from IDC have helped to support IDRI’s programs, and IDC’s clinical safety data relating to the adjuvants have been vital in IDRI’s ability to accelerate the development of vaccines for tuberculosis and leishmaniasis, two diseases with an immense global health burden.

InterDigital CEO William Merritt writes: “It’s no secret that the regulatory environment is challenging for companies that license patents – in our case, patents that are deemed essential to wireless standards… One of the greatest frustrations for me is that so much of this rests on a bedrock of total miscomprehension of how standards are developed… I met with a reporter for one of the primary tech websites in the world, and he dismissed standards development. It became apparent he didn’t understand how the process worked at all… He didn’t realize that it was private sector companies – companies like ours – that committed significant engineering time and resources, and competed to develop the best solutions, and in so doing committed to licensing them fairly.”