The New I/P Marketplace

According to representatives from yet2.com and Ocean Tomo in their presentation entitled "Patent Auctions & Marketplaces: Leveraging Value from Under-employed Technologies," here is what the new I/P marketplace may look like:

Jim Malackowski and Tim Burnstein also forecast significant new opportunities in selling, especially selling orphaned technology platforms to small companies, and large companies seeking to acquire innovation from smaller organizations:

Other emerging concepts that they identy include

• Hybrid litigation and auction of non-exclusive licenses (license for a given unit quantity in private sale or at Live Auction)
• Creation of VC backed new Patent Licensing and Enforcement Company ("P-LEC")
• P-LEC spinout with structured finance funding, either tax advantage royalty securitization or corporate bond issue (both very interesting and prevents dilution but more complex)
• P-LEC spinout into separate public company or tracking stock

Their bottom line: a more liquid and transparent patent marketplace is good for everyone, and may actually decrease litigation.

But beware of the due diligence problem. It's can be awfully tough to sort through all of those patent claims before you make your bid, much less be ceratin that the missing patent is not the one that turns your (non-P-LEC) business into an infringer.