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Profiting
Validity
Value
Paths
Storytelling
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The Patent
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Profiting From Your Patents
There are two ways to profit from a patent: sell it, or, if it is being infringed, enforce it. There are many factors leading to a rational determination of the optimal path to monetize a patent portfolio.
If you or your company has a patent portfolio, even a solitary patent, the inevitable question arises of how to profit from it. Before that question can be answered affirmatively, two prerequisites arise: validity and value. For valid and valuable patents, there are two paths to profit, though one far surpasses the other in cost, risk, and concomitant reward.
Having a patent granted provides little assurance that the patent is valid. Patent examiners are time-pressured production line workers; quality control suffers sometimes. Patents are commonly invalidated during litigation. Patent Hawk has invalidated numerous litigated patents.
There is no reason to spend money promoting a patent that can be invalidated. The first step of sensibly monetizing patents is assuring validity through a prior art search vetting, a Patent Hawk specialty.
Read more about prior art search.
Ironically for a supposed monopoly, as a commodity itself, a patent's value is ultimately determined by its adoption by others. If no other company is interested in adopting a patent's claimed technology, it lacks monetization potential. The 1942 patent on wireless spread spectrum communication is one example.
The second step of monetizing a patent is surveying companies that, putting it politely, "may have an interest" in licensing a patented technology. That's a laugh line, because companies, with rare exception, fight like hell to avoid paying what they consider a "patent tax."
At its best for a patent holder, surveying companies means finding companies that have already adopted the patented technology; in other words, infringers. Once found, infringement can often be ascertained by analysis of a company's relevant products. Patent Hawk has experience in surveying companies, infringement analysis, and valuating patents, including infringement damages.
Companies often consider patents primarily as a defensive measure, but not a readily tradable commodity. Even large corporations do not typically respond well to an offer of an opportunity to license a patent. The proliferation of patent litigation in America owes much to corporate intransigence.
Read more about patent valuation.
A company can sell its patent portfolio to a patent licensing company at a small fraction of its value. While relatively risk- and cost-free, this path is not recommended, as the reward is meager.
Alternately, a company can pursue a path of proactive patent enforcement and licensing as a way to monetize its patents. The problematic aspect with this approach is the potential expense.
Patent litigation costs several hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per case. Some law firms take patent infringement cases on a contingency basis, if the law firm can be persuaded that the case appears favorable. It all comes down to storytelling.
Persuading a judge or jury that a patent has been infringed, and damages incurred, is the story that a law firm sells in court. That story first has to be persuasively sold to a contingency law firm for the firm to be willing to take the case in the first place (and then tell the story again in litigation).
With unsurpassed quality, at a fraction of the cost of employing a team of attorneys, Patent Hawk can construct your patent story for you: first, by validity search, provide assurance that your patents are valid and worth active pursuit of monetization; second, survey for infringement and licensing opportunities; third, construct infringement damage estimates; fourth, package the story for presentation to a law firm for acceptance and subsequent litigation.
Patent Hawk can, as in numerous previous litigations, work with the litigation team of attorneys and any expert witnesses to ensure technically accurate presentations to the court, helping provide an edge for a winning case. Patent Hawk provides a complete service to its clients in maximizing profits from patents.
Read about preparing for patent assertion with a contingency law firm.
© 2008 Patent Hawk LLC