SHARE:  
Join Our Email List
April 11, 2018
Efrat's  Message : PresidentsMessage

With Q1 behind us, I wanted to highlight one aspect of Foresight's services this year that has been working with many international clients. The need to value intellectual property is universal, as companies everywhere look to commercialize, monetize, or fund their innovation. Many of the international IP valuations that we engage in involve the need to leverage IP assets (patents, brand or technology) for funding, or leverage IP assets for global expansion. Regardless of the country of origin, the one thing all of these have in common is a deep conviction that IP assets have value as strategic business assets. We hear a lot about the erosion in the strength of the US patent system, and it is actually quite encouraging to see that investing in IP still pays off. I hope that some of my colleagues in the IP community are reading this post and are taking a minute to try and see beyond the PTAB and the Supreme Court decisions in the US and are taking note of the global opportunity that is still very much embedded in IP assets. 

In this newsletter, we are featuring an article that I wrote following the work we have been doing over the last couple of years involving the valuation of IP assets in divorce cases. While relatively new to family court, the area of IP valuation has caught on as IP assets begin to show up more and more when one of the spouses is involved in a technology venture as a founder, inventor or investor. We are also featuring some of the recent patent litigation news, as selected form our Twitter feed. 

I look forward to seeing many of you in the upcoming LESI meeting in San Diego (April 29-May 2). I am putting together a Blockchain panel that promises to be very educational and informative.
 
 
Warm Regards,

   

News Highlights:  NewsHighlights

This month we chose to highlight some of the recent interesting patent litigation stories that caught the headlines. Each of these involve a prominent, well-known tech company that is faced with a patent infringement claim; Bumble, Facebook, and Apple. The plaintiffs in each case represent an interesting mix of companies: one is an operating company (Match Group), one is an NPE (Portal Communications), and one is a former operating company that has recently shifted its focus to IP licensing (BlackBerry). 
 
"Tinder's parent company is suing Bumble for patent infringement"
 
 
Match Group (owners of Tinder, Match.com, and many other dating services) filed a lawsuit against Bumble that accuses the company of infringing on 2 of Tinder's patents. The lawsuit also mentions trademark infringement for use of the work "swiping." Interestingly, Match Group has reportedly shown past interest in acquiring Bumble and may still be looking to acquire the company by leveraging the lawsuit as a way to negotiate the price.
 
"BlackBerry weaponizes instant messaging patents, sues Facebook"
 
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/blackberry-sues-facebook-arguing-it-owns-basic-messaging-concepts/
 
Amidst a flurry of obstacles that Facebook has faced recently, BlackBerry is suing the social network over infringement on 7 of its patents. Like other struggling tech companies in the past, BlackBerry has turned to patent licensing as a source of income. The lawsuit claims that Facebook owned applications Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger infringe on the patents which have claims that are "remarkably broad" according to Ars Technica.
 
"Apple facing patent lawsuit over Siri's natural language capabilities"
 
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/apple-facing-patent-lawsuit-over-siris-natural-language-capabilities-1822215
 
Portal Communications (a non-practicing entity) has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit targets Apple's Siri virtual assistant and claims that the software infringes on a set of patents related to natural language voice query systems. Portal Communications took possession of the patents in January when they were transferred from The Intellection Group.

Foresight In the Media:  ForesightBlog  
 How to determine the value of intellectual property in divorce cases

Tangible assets, like bank accounts and real estate, are relatively straightforward to identify and value in marital dissolutions. On the other hand, intellectual property, such as patents, software, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, are much more difficult to identify and value in divorce situations, and in particular due to the information asymmetry resulting from the fact the one of the spouses may control some of these assets where the other spouse knows nothing very little about these assets, sometimes not realizing they even exist. In the article below we describe how IP assets are identified and valued in divorce situations:




Upcoming Events: UpcomingEvents
Lifograph
Please join us for a workshop on Financial Modeling, Projections & Valuation on April 18, in Prcoppio, Palo Alto. For more details follow the link. 


 
This year's LESI Annual Meeting 2018,  will be in San Diego, From April 27 to May 2. Please follow the link   for more information.