The Licensing Executive Society (LES) 2009 Winter meeting will incorporate the professional aspects of licensing and how they exemplify licensing as a culture…a global culture.  Licensing opportunities exist on a global scale, and LES members are increasingly called up on to develop and manage Intellectual Property around the world. Licensing professionals globally deal with the […]

Planet Eureka! In the category of solutions looking for problems to solve, Planet Eureka! is a new on-line marketplace for patents and other intellectual property rights by Eureka Ranch Technologies in Cincinnati, Ohio. Planet Eureka! Offers the USA National Innovation Marketplace as a way to bring together buyers and sellers of intellectual property. The Marketplace […]

The San Francisco Business Journal ran a feature suggesting that biotech companies are running into hurdles in doing deals with universities, specifically the University of California System in this case. The article writes that the problem is that it simply takes too long to get the deal done — that agreements took months rather than […]

After the Supreme Court decision in MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., et al. (S.Ct. No. 05–608) , licensees would now seem to have a chance to get out of bad license deals by challenging the validity of the underlying patents. This case asked whether companies can sue to invalidate another’s patent even when they don’t […]

Dennis Crouch over at patently-o has posted on his great blog the briefs filed in a patent case soon to be heard in the Supreme Court.  The Court and parties believe the issue is whether there is Article III jurisdiction over a declaratory judgment action brought against the licensor of a patent by the licensee […]

Recently, I had a client that was about to license a biotech invention for development as a therapeutic. In the course of discussions, we found that in order to bring the product to market, the licensee may need to obtain rights from various other rights holders. As a result, the licensee may be faced with […]

Among the most frequently asked questions I get from start-up companies is: How much should I pay for licensing in a technology? Answer: As little as possible. Kidding aside, this is really a very complicated question that cannot be answered without a lot of homework. While most companies seem to use a valuation method I […]

IP management is of strategic importance for universities since they can derive significant benefits from an effectively-managed IP portfolio.  According to a survey published by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), the fiscal year 2002 saw over US$37 billion in sponsored research expenditures at 212 member institutions responding to the survey.  During the same […]