Translator
By N2H
Patent Monetization
 |
||
|
Understanding the value of your technology to others is an opportunity to help your bottom line. |
||
In Henry Chesborough’s ground-breaking book, Open Business Models, he cites that from an unscientific sample, companies only use 5-25% of their patented technologies. The result is that 75-95% of a company’s research products might be living out their technology lifecycles having failed to add value to the bottom line.
As a result, identifying companies that may be interested in licensing your technology is often of interest to patent holders. While there are many ways to find companies in the chosen field, using patent data is a unique approach.
We leverage our internal software to search and analyze the patent and publication databases, and find companies that are active in that field. Our software and search algorithms let us find patents that relate to peripheral technologies. These help us identify companies that could benefit from the technology of your patent and may be good candidates for licensing.
The advantage of starting with the patent database is that the companies we find are already active with patents, thus demonstrating that they value intellectual property. If they have an existing portfolio, they may be receptive to licensing in complementary technology.
An interesing note: A recent study by McKinsey (”Getting More from Intellectual Property”, by Meagan Dietz and Jeffrey Elton, McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 Number 4) found that “Companies can raise their overall licensing revenues by using in-licensing specifically to generate out-licensing revenues: that is, incorporating in-licensing ideas and technology to improve their own products and processes and then turning around and out-licensing the improved products.” They go on to say of that companies that engage in this in-to-out license activity, 64% of them derive more than 10% of corporate revenues from licensing. Thus, combined with Patent Mining, Licensing can be used to leverage underutilized assets in your portfolio.