May 12, 2009
The rising tide of the recession has brought with it a wave of change in our approach to commerce, but perhaps no transition has provided as much optimism as the growing share of commerce involving intellectual property assets. Intellectual property has been increasingly recognized as a burgeoning asset class, an important financing tool, and a revenue-generating instrument for exchange. Acknowledging this phenomenon, the United States has joined a global initiative to help push a common knowledge of this use of intellectual property, ... Read More
May 4, 2009
I have discovered a very interesting post from a couple of weeks ago on the 12:01 Tuesday Blog, written by Chicago IP attorney Aaron Feigelson. The post is titled "Patenting the Business of Patents", and discusses tangible evidence of the burgeoning IP marketplace by way of 14 U.S. patents (11 of which have been issued in the past 2 years) covering the method and business of valuing IP. Feigelson lists all 14 of the patents, which I will recreate the list here:
7,493,262
Method for ... Read More
Apr 30, 2009
I have been waiting for this sort of collaborative venture. According to a recent article on FindLaw, international law firm, Morrison & Foerster LLP, has entered into a collaboration with Northern California-based Ovidian Group, LLC, an IP asset management firm, to offer the kind of corporate IP management and consulting services that blend both law and business strategy. This has been coming. Clients are now demanding these sort of strategic consulting services that combine intellectual property and corporate management expertise with knowledge ... Read More
Apr 27, 2009
A New York Times article today (Losses in Good-Will Values Dog Bank Deals) attributes the massive write-downs occurring at banks these days to overvalued good will and the overpayment for companies during the "merger mania" of the last decade. The following part caught my attention:
Companies are taking billions of dollars in losses as they write down the value of assets known as good will - the amount they overpaid for a business compared with the sum of its parts. As the economy ... Read More
Apr 21, 2009
Oracle jumped on the transaction that IBM could not complete. The reason for IBM's failure to finish the deal sheds light on the anti-trust implications that would have resulted. IBM's large market share in servers overlapped with Oracle's offerings to a point that would have created a monster that HP and Cisco couldn't overcome. Obama's shadow over anti-competitive actions could finally be causing some winds to change . . .
More details on the Oracle/Sun deal, for 7.38 billion, HERE. Read More
Apr 21, 2009
The newest Intellectual Asset Management Magazine (IAM) revisits what is probably the most important, and most troubling, issue pervading the IP market today: Intellectual property valuation. I have visited the topic in a number of posts, and this trend probably won't stop anytime soon. The IAM article is another step in the right direction, authored by Pat Sullivan, who has taken the reigns on the conversation of standard setting in IP valuation.
While I encourage everyone to find this issue of IAM, if not every issue, I understand it ... Read More
Apr 15, 2009
Despite the importance of intellectual property, and its protection and efficient management by the corporate world (and all IP owners), mass media seems to forget about it, or at least misunderstand it. The blame should probably not lie on the mass media, however. Instead, it is probably the fault of IP professionals, including myself, who do not educate these people on the critical effect proper protection and management of IP has on business success.
In the past week, the topic of IP in ... Read More
Apr 10, 2009
Calling themselves an "intellectual property investment bank", Silicon Valley-based Inflexion Point Strategy, LLC "represent[s] technology companies and institutional investors in the acquisition and sale of patent portfolios having strategic value and in the sourcing and execution of IP-intensive M&A transactions." Inflexion Point grabs hold of the growing notion that IP is much more than a bundle of legal rights, and they are one of the leaders at the frontier of the IP market that continues to push the idea that IP is a ... Read More
Apr 6, 2009
Two blurbs published today, one by the New York Times and the other by the Wall Street Journal, highlighted the state of the M&A market. The Wall Street Journal material is a great graphic showing M&A activity, generally, in the first quarter of 2009. According to the piece, overall deals are down 21% worldwide from the 1st quarter of 2008 (but rose in the U.S.). The New York Times piece specifically indicates the status of the deal market in the technology sector. Apparently, the first quarter ... Read More
Apr 2, 2009
Technology Transfer Tactics, in partner with Intellectual Property Research Associates, Inc., has released 3 updated volumes of their Royalty Rate books, which are "dedicated to reporting detailed information about the economic aspects of intellectual property transactions including licensing and joint ventures." The books showcase data from IP transactions, categorized by industry, which provides empirical evidence of royalty rates used through recent years. Compensation terms are reported for actual transactions in the following industries: aeronautics, agriculture, automotive, chemistry, communications, computer hardware, computer software, construction ... Read More
Ian McClure is a former corporate & securities and intellectual property law attorney with 
Trevor M. Blum is a former Associate in the Chicago-based, valuation practice group of Ocean Tomo, LLC., an intellectual property (IP) consultancy. Additionally, he provided instrumental research support to Intellectual Property Exchange International, Inc., an IP exchange start-up. Trevor holds a B.S. from Indiana University and is currently an MBA candidate at the University of Cambridge, focusing on international business and finance. His interests also include entrepreneurship, economics, and informational visualization. He enjoys running and cycling in his free time. Trevor seeks to bring a transnational business perspective to the blog. 