It's been two decades since Intellectual Property (IP) and its development became a defining element in investment strategies for parties on both sides of the negotiation table. In the late 1990's, investors wanted their dot-com startup companies to have patents, as it would help the company appear innovative. Even after the dot-coms went bust, investors regarded IP as upside protection; meaning, if the company went under, the IP portion of the portfolio could keep the deal from being a complete loss. Investors, like Venture Capitalists (VCs), who got burned by multiple failed investment efforts, turned their interest towards start-up companies with a strong balance sheet versus those with no revenue potential. For example, if pre-investment research showed that the start-up had a Freedom to Operate (FTO), then IP became a more important consideration on an investor's check list.
POSTED BY John Cronin AT 12:20 P.M. Nov 20, 2018
TAGS: John Cronin | Regulation and Legislation | Strategy | Trade Secrets | Valuation | Mergers and Acquisitions | Licensing | Patent SalesWhen deciding where to file patents, that is, what other countries should a patent be filed in other than the inventor's home country, there are important considerations that need to be evaluate and weighed against each other. This creates a "foreign filings decision matrix" approach. Here are some of the considerations that might help create a "foreign filings decision matrix." Simply list the countries in columns and these considerations as rows and put a high, medium or low at each intersection to create an evaluation matrix.
POSTED BY John Cronin AT 9:22 A.M. Oct 24, 2018
TAGS: Invention | John Cronin | Strategy | ChinaArtificial Intelligence (AI) goes back to the 1950’s, as defined by Minsky & McCarthy, to be “any task performed by a program or a machine that, if a human carried out the same activity, we would say the human had to apply intelligence to accomplish the task”. This being the case, a lot has happened in almost 70 years since that statement. The history of AI can be easily researched; however, a reasonable definition can also be extracted from examples of how AI is being used and what AI is being used for.
POSTED BY John Cronin AT 6:28 P.M. Oct 17, 2018
TAGS: Innovation | Invention | John Cronin | Process | Strategy | Artificial IntelligenceThe day has come where large innovation labs built by companies may not be needed. Why spend hundreds of millions to billions of dollars on a physical structure, staffed with creative people and equipped with the best tools, when this all can be virtualized? In this context, "Virtualized" does not mean remote workers, but taking the innovation process and virtualizing it with AI tools and specialized, data analytic capability and inventors. These inventors don't even have to have domain knowledge, as experts can be hired by the hour from the crowd.
POSTED BY John Cronin AT 12:46 P.M. Oct 17, 2018
TAGS: Innovation | Invention | John Cronin | Strategy | Artificial IntelligenceAn enlightened IT director needs to see that AI will be a huge cost savings and quality boost to the organization, and needs to guide the AI app developers, all while maintaining the security and robustness of the existing enterprise software and database. That is a larger skill set than most IT directors may have. But, to thrive in the new world of AI, the IT director should not use the security and robustness of the existing enterprise software and database as a blockade to innovation. The IT director must now play a more innovative role him/herself.
POSTED BY John Cronin AT 11:37 A.M. Oct 9, 2018
TAGS: Innovation | John Cronin | Data Security | Artificial IntelligenceFor many years, those working at licensing and patent sales for hundreds of buyers and sellers have always realized that "telling the story" was essential. An industry standard, if not the industry standard, was a 2-pager flyer with sections on Business, Market, Technology, Valuation, and Claims Charting, etc. to create interest and then leads. Buyers or licensees had their own information requirements, but it always came down to the overlap of interest and good patents. New in the industry is a video of the IP to be sold or licensed. Seems like most people will open a 3-4 minute video but will not read a 2 page or longer package to get interest. But what is the formula for the marketing video: actors, sets, music; what do IP brokers now have to do?
POSTED BY John Cronin AT 11:58 A.M. Oct 5, 2018
TAGS: Commercialization | John Cronin | Licensing | Patent SalesThere is no question that large artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to solve the numerous efficiency and quality needs in the intellectual property (IP)/intellectual asset management (IAM) space will fail. This has been seen with companies that have tried to bring in a generalized AI engine to solve a specific need. The reason for this is clear now, and becoming clearer every day. AI is coming into our IP/IAM space as an application (app) store type business model.
POSTED BY John Cronin AT 1:32 P.M. Sep 14, 2018
TAGS: IAM | Innovation | John Cronin | Process | StrategyOn May 9-11, ipCapital Group held its 14th Annual Thought Leadership Conference. This year’s theme was The RenAIssance of IP. The conference was filled with provocative discussions revolving around hot topics in intellectual property (IP). Following the full day conference, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) IP Tools Workshop was held, during which two highly regarded AI startups presented demos.
POSTED BY ipCG Team AT 1:29 P.M. June 7, 2018
TAGS: Adam Bulakowski | IAM | ipCG Team | John Cronin | Strategy | Artificial IntelligenceJohn Cronin, Managing Director and Chairman, and Jacob Rosen, Chief Executive Officer and Matt Osman, Chief Technology Officer of Legit are co-authors of "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Invention Disclosures". Intro: Artificial Intelligence (AI), when implemented correctly, uses humans’ biggest weakness to its advantage: the management and analysis of huge quantities of data. Confronted with several million documents all containing different information, a legal practitioner's first goal will be to reduce that to a reasonable level. That is often what previous workflow technology has been previously used for, particularly in the legal realm. Document management systems filter by date, author and keywords, RSS feeds show only news stories pertaining to an attorney’s current cases and even the “find” function on PDFs documents help you ignore most of the target document. The performance of these tools does not improve when the amount of data it is tasked with handling increases, in fact in most cases it declines.
POSTED BY John Cronin AT 2:59 P.M. April 6, 2018
TAGS: Innovation | John Cronin | Process | Strategy | Artificial Intelligence | DisclosuresOn Thursday May 11th, ipCapital Group held its 13th Annual Thought Leadership Conference, bringing together innovation and intellectual property (IP) leaders from around the world in the picturesque Essex Resort & Spa in Northwest Vermont. This year’s conference theme was Effective Innovation - Transforming Ideas into High-Value IP.
POSTED BY ipCG Team AT 8:45 A.M. May 31, 2017
TAGS: ipCG Team | IAM | Innovation | John Cronin | Strategy | Trade Secrets | ValuationThe rise in the prevalence of technology and patent filings in the car rental industry is creating the possibility of an industry disruption due to intellectual property. Car rental companies that acknowledge and prepare for the increasing importance of IP will stand to benefit, while companies that ignore the importance of IP will suffer.
POSTED BY John Cronin and Nathan Doudera AT 1:20 P.M. Jul 25, 2012
TAGS: Disruption | John Cronin | Mobile | Nathan DouderaThe Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) recently signed into law by president Obama represents the most substantial modification to the U.S. patent system in the past fifty years, and most notably, changes the U.S. system from a "first to invent" to a "first to file" system. These new rules will undoubtedly cause companies to re-think their intellectual property (IP) strategy and re-tool their IP process.
"It is only a matter of time before the integration of IP and product development becomes part of the mainstream business process. Companies have to decide whether they want to be leaders or laggards as this happens." John Cronin, Managing Director & Chairman of ipCG, and Brad Goldense President and CEO of Goldense Group, Inc. are the authors of "Integral IAM and new product processes are the future," published in the November/December 2009 issue of IAM Magazine. Their article stresses the importance of becoming an early adopter to the growing trend of merging intellectual property and business goals.
In 1997, a small Texas company called DataTreasury invented and patented a novel technology to electronically capture and store checks. More than 10 years later, after post-September 11th laws were instituted requiring banks to be less reliant on paper checks being transported by aircraft, DataTreasury found that its patent was being used by a long list of major American banks.