The patent monetisation cookbook: a structured approach to monetising patents
This is an Insight article, written by a selected partner as part of IAM's co-published content. Read more on Insight
Businesses throughout the world are beginning to focus on the asset value of their patent portfolios. The rise of non-practising entities has also stemmed from the recognition that patents are valuable business assets that can be monetised. Recently, patent assets have been the primary driver of spectacularly large transactions. The speculation around the sale of a portion of Kodak’s patent portfolio, the patent asset-driven purchase of Motorola Mobility by Google for $12.5 billion and the $4.5 billion sale of 6,000 Nortel patents to a consortium including Apple and Microsoft are all excellent examples. Inevitably, transactions such as these have prompted corporate executives and boards to look more closely at their patent holdings with an eye towards monetising those assets. To them and others, monetisation is particularly interesting for patent assets that have been developed – as is often the case – in order to protect clever ideas, but without being aligned to business strategies, and are thus not supporting current business objectives. These shelf assets, the thinking goes, are potential sources of cash.
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