Recent deals show operating companies are still in the business of working with NPEs on monetisation projects
One of the things that sometimes gets lost in discussions around patent licensing, the worth of intangible assets and the role that NPEs continue to play in the market is that, as a series of recent announcement has shown, there remains a significant and perhaps growing group of operating companies that are very much engaged in the monetisation market. Last week this blog reported that Panasonic had transferred a small portfolio of 20 patents to Conversant. That’s not a new approach for the Japanese tech giant which has been a source of patents for the likes of Inventergy and PanOptis, but it was notable that in the Canadian NPE it chose a private company with which to partner on a new monetisation strategy.
Prior to the Conversant news, Marathon also revealed its own new partnership with GE Oil and Gas to pursue monetisation opportunities. On a call with investors in mid-November, Marathon CEO Doug Croxall revealed that the two would have an ongoing relationship which would see “a continual flow of assets” from GE to the NPE. That deal stands out both because it is in the oil and gas sector – an industry which has seen growing but still embryonic interest in IP monetisation – and because it’s GE, a company with a huge portfolio that touches so many different areas. “I believe that this model has the potential to be repeated with other corporate partners that will extend Marathon’s portfolio of ever growing assets into other industry sectors,” Croxall stated.
Earlier this year, Marathon also announced a huge deal with an unnamed Fortune 50 company which saw the NPE agree to try to commercialise and monetise a portfolio of 11,500 assets, as well as a further stockpile of assets from Siemens covering cellular and Internet of Things technology.
In September Acacia replenished its own pipeline with another portfolio from its well- established partnership with Renesas Electronics. If you also factor in that Intellectual Ventures appears to be in selling mode after recent deals with Dominion Harbor and Equitable IP, as does Korean patent fund Intellectual Discovery, then it’s clear that there’s a pretty healthy pipeline of monetisation opportunities for some NPEs.
Of course, sourcing patents and making money out of them are two very different disciplines so this doesn’t mean that conditions have fundamentally changed for many NPEs. If anything the recent deals point to a small band of well run, well capitalised and, increasingly, privately held firms remaining in business while others look to change course or to simply stay in business. China’s growing appeal as a litigation forum and the news yesterday that the UK will ratify the Unified Patent Court agreement, also mean that successful NPEs will increasingly be those with the experience of operating across multiple jurisdictions.
If these deals start to pay off for the likes of Siemens and GE then expect more to follow. Many operating companies with large portfolios still face the question of what to do with the high number of assets which often remain untouched. As these recent deals show, despite headwinds in the US, for some major patent owners IP monetisation is still firmly on the agenda.
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