IP P®OSPE©TIVE

I would introduce the purpose and activities of Altitude Capital Partners myself, but an Amicus brief filed by Altitude Capital Partners (along with Ocean Tomo, Inflexion Point Strategy, IPotential, and others) with the U.S. Supreme Court in KSR International Co., v. Teleflex, Inc., introduces Altitude better than any summary I could come up with.  Therefore,

Altitude Capital Partners invests in patents as well as the firms that own them. By specializing in the valuation and
enforcement of intellectual property rights, Altitude serves, as one commentator has put it, as an intermediary “to exploit the value of patents that cannot be exploited effectively by those that have originally obtained them.” Ronald J. Mann, Do Patents Facilitate Financing in the Software Industry?, 83 TEX. L. REV. 961, 1024 (2005). Relatedly, Altitude seeks to enter arrangements in which it purchases patents from inventors. For example, Altitude has agreed to give one inventor, a research scientist, an up-front payment for his rights to a stream of royalties that a large corporation had previously agreed to pay the scientist to license his patents on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. The scientist will use the payment as seed capital for a new innovative venture. The arrangement, which allows each party to focus on what it does best, illustrates how capital and patents can work together in a cycle that enhances innovation by placing technology rights in the hands of those best able to use them.

 

Brief of Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents, KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).