Introduction
This is The IPHawk Patent Newsletter, a newsletter about Patent Litigation, Litigation Finance, USPTO PTAB Inter Partes Reviews.
Some background about me. I am not a lawyer or investment professional. Nothing in this newsletter/website should be construed as investment or legal advice. I have zero formal training in patent law or investments. Everything I have learned is self taught. I want to thank everyone in the investment and patent communities for helping me along the way.
A little more background about me. I worked in accounting/auditing after college specializing in nonprofit and government auditing. Fell in love with investing and trading in 2009 after the CDs I was buying at the bank weren’t getting much of a return. I found event driven investments specifically in patents the summer of 2010. I have spent the last 11 years learning as much as possible about intellectual property and investing while loving every second of it.
I am really focused on new patents being issued and new applications being published. At the moment I am most interested in ex tech employees who were granted patents at their tech firms and what new technologies they are filing patents for at the startups they have founded or joined. Are they building a better mousetrap than their prior companies or an entire new mousetrap? I am hopeful startups are taking their intellectual property seriously and filing patent applications to protect their inventions. The anti-patent narrative big tech has been issuing has been damaging to prior patent owners and I am hopeful it has not infected the next generation of inventors.
Here is where my accounting brain starts working and hasn’t really stopped for most of the COVID19 shutdown. Intangible value represents represents 70% of global enterprise values with only a fraction of that value actually appearing on company’s balance sheets. Accounting standards do not recognize the majority of intangible assets in the financials until a transaction is closed to support the value. This was done to prevent unsubstantiated inflated asset value. This is probably a good thing. It also means that over 30% of the total worth of publicly traded companies is an undisclosed value. Why isn’t anyone trying to value this missing 30% and if we did what metrics or data would we look at? Should the value be higher or lower based on strong/weak IP, old patents near expiration, new patents that teach technical efficiencies, or the ever changing patent laws?
A good start would be a company’s current patent holdings and a detailed analysis on what technologies and products the patents cover, the remaining patent life, open patent applications, and new patent applications being filed/published. You would also want to look at trade secrets, brand value, customer lists, new employees, retiring employees. Along with reporting on current patent litigation and PTAB proceedings, I will be attempting to crack the code on the above questions. The plan for 2022 is to write weekly about ongoing patent news and cases.
My email iphawk@outlook is open for feedback, comments, and corrections. I watch hundreds of court dockets but always miss a few things. If there is something interesting filed or an interesting case I should be following send it my way. If you are a patent owner looking to partner or sell your patent portfolio let me know as I know buyers. If you are an investor looking to invest in the patent space let me know as I know patent owners looking for funding.