Patents
Why it’s not easy to collect patent license fees and what it takes to be successful in patent licensing.
In this podcast, we explore why patents are often asserted through dedicated patent assertion entities, why an army of patent litigators, prosecution attorneys, inter-parte review attorneys, patent brokers and technical experts are required.Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This episode is about non-practicing entities (NPE’s). Otherwise referred to as patent licensing companies, patent assertion entities (PAE’s) or patent holding companies, non-practicing entities are companies who’s sole activity is patent licensing. David Smith explains why they exist, what they do, how they make money and the pros and cons of working with them.
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David Smith and attorney Tom Fasone explain how the International Trade Commission (ITC) is a federal agency tasked with protecting American domestic industries from foreign unfair competition connected to imports into the United States. This podcast explains how products infringing patents and other infringing products can be blocked by US Customs and Border Protection. It explains how cases at the ITC are on expedited schedules, and how ITC cases differ from cases brought before the US federal courts.
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This episode explains why companies buy patents, what they’re looking for in a patent, what patents are most sellable, and what prices patents collect on the market. It guides patent holders through the process of selling a patent, and helps them navigate the legal minefields along the way.
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Understand the bizarre patent marketplace through looking at the numbers. For example, 98.5% of patents are never asserted. This translates to $60bn spent on patents that are never used. Podcast covers cost of prosecution, maintenance, litigation, inter-parte review (IPR) as well as statistics on fee shifting and other topics.
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Paul Kallmes discusses entrepreneurship, international expansion, managing risk, pitching investors, raising finance from venture capital investors, angel investing and even rock climbing in this interview from the Vault, an innovation ecosystem and global network of startup accelerators and collaborative workspaces with a facility in the heart of San Francisco.
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If you don’t know where you’re going, what chance do you have of getting there? This is the first in a series of episodes on the startup journey and today we’re talking about targeting your destination. Future episodes will deal with other aspects of your journey like generating momentum, gathering your provisions, setting and achieving milestones and selecting your travelling companions.
In this series on the startup journey, you’ll learn that you’re most likely to reach your destination if you know exactly where you’re going, you have sufficient fuel to get there, you plan for contingencies, maintain momentum and assemble a winning team.
This episode looks at some of the alternative destinations you might want to select for your startup. We’re going to talk about independent survival, where you build a business independent of outside investment, with the goal of generating profitable revenues, for years to come.
We’ll talk about IPO, where you build a company that has its shares traded on the public markets. “IPO” stands for “initial public offering”.
Then we’ll divide a sale of the company into two types. Cash flow sale is where you sell the company as a profitable going concern. The buyer is getting a cash-flow generating business.
The term “asset sale” has a more specific meaning in legal jargon, but for the purpose of our startup journey, we’ll use this to refer to a situation where a buyer acquires your company for your product or technology. In Silicon Valley, there are situations where unprofitable companies are acquired when they have a hot product, or some unique technology or asset that will enhance the buyer’s business.
In this episode you get to learn the basics of how venture capital investment funds operate, how they select startups for investment and what types of companies are suitable for venture capital investment.
This is an important episode as it provides a foundation for future discussions we will have on this podcast series.
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David Smith explains how this podcast series is designed to help entrepreneurs build more successful startups and help more innovators profit from their ideas and inventions. David explains how he has formed more than a dozen startups, authored several books, graduated from law school as well as business school, raised finance from Bill Gates, venture funds and angel investors in China & Japan.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of startups fail. Many fail due to lack of knowledge and experience by the entrepreneurs. The podcast series is designed to help entrepreneurs understand what they need to know to be successful.
This episode discusses how this podcast series is supported with dozens of courses, thousands of videos and reading materials, and how Silicon Valley Business School provides online guidance and education to everyone, everywhere.
Offering suggestions as to how entrepreneurs can be more successful, the topics range from patents to venture capital preferred stock investment terms.
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