4 ms·
Patents have value even if you never get a product out the door.
by egdod 7y ago
Patents have value even if you never get a product out the door.
- gumby 7y agoPatents can have value even if you never get a product out the door. Most patents are not worth the money spent getting them in the first place.
- egdod 7y agoWhile it's true that most patents never get asserted or licensed, I suspect that in a pure sale, very few would go for less than the prosecution cost.
- gumby 7y agoThat has not been my experience, on both sides of a transaction. Sometimes massive libraries of patents are useful (I presume this is why google kept Motorola's patents when they sold the company off) simply because they can be brandished as a counter-weapon when a large company is threatened in a patent battle. But think of it as a sandbag: one grain of sand is negligible and few companies have more than a handful.
- mikekchar 7y agoI was thinking about this... Let's say Magic Leap survives for another 2 years, then defaults. That gives you 8 years left on those key patents. It just doesn't seem like enough time to actually build something and sell it. So like you say, the only real value is in selling it to someone who would like it as part of a defensive portfolio (not too likely in my books)... or using them in a patent troll fashion (suing other people for patent infringement despite the fact that you never intend to use the patent yourself). My question is: Who does JPM think they would sue in this case to justify the value? I wouldn't think there were too many candidates to choose from (both in VR and have piles of cash that you can liberate)...
- riffraff 7y agoApple, Microsoft, Google all have some VR tech and a lot of cash. I wouldn't think they would be a good candidate for patent trolling but they could have some mild interest in buying the IP.