Tag Archives: IP Business Congress

The “new normal” is focus of IP Business Congress in Barcelona

April 27, 2016 by Bruce Berman 1 Comment

With traditional patent strategies under pressure to show that they are still relevant, business as usual in the IP space is no longer the same.

Patent-adverse laws and more circumspect courts have forced owners worldwide to rethink how best to obtain, evaluate and utilize patents. The added scrutiny also has encouraged new, more collaborative IP business models and to reconsider ways of generating ROI.

This year’s IP Business Congress (IPBC Global) at the Arts Hotel in Barcelona, June 5-7. 6a00d8341c1ad253ef019aff9b0225970d-800wi 2016 will be host to more than 75 presenters and 600 attendees. It marks the ninth IPBC Global, the leading event for the business of IP value creation.

The keynote session, “Welcome to the new normal,” will feature the head or co-head of IP at Microsoft, SAP, LG and Google, and the former director of IP business at Sony. An IP executive from Ericsson will moderate.

Rapid Evolution

“New challenges posed by a rapidly evolving global IP market have caused many affected by IP to re-think ways of doing business,” said Joff Wild, Editor of IAM magazine and lead IPBC Global producer. “Developments in Europe and Asia are creating a more international ecosystem, and assertion-based monetization programs are becoming harder to implement in the U.S.”

This year’s IPBC Global sessions include:

  • Welcome to the new normal
  • Meeting the Chief IP officer challenge
  • Peace not war
  • Insider the inter partes review regime
  • Quality trumps quantity
  • Adapt or die
  • The Alice effect
  • Europe’s chance to lead
  • Buyers’ market
  • Debate: Patents as an asset class

Bruce Berman (yes, me) has been asked to moderate a debate on a controversial topic, “Patents as an asset class.” I will have my work cut out for me: It has frequently been claimed that patents are an asset class and should be treated as such by owners and investors. However, others vehemently disagree. They argue that promoting them in this way does more harm than good. Who is right?

Make Your Voice Heard

Readers who plan to attend the conference are encouraged to stop by the IP asset discussion. Members of the audience will be equipped with devices that permit them to cast their vote for against patents as assets at the end of the debate.Logo120x60

IP CloseUp readers who register will receive as 20% discount if they use the registration code IPBC16IPCU.

As usual at IPBC, there will be a host of good networking and private meeting opportunities, and the Catalan back-drop ought to make things even more intriguing. Barcelona is one of Europe’s top technology hubs, and recently was named the world’s “Most Wired City.”

For program and speaker information go here. To register go here.

Image source: ipbusinesscongress.com; http://superflat.typepad.com/

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The state of patent value will be front and center at the IP Business Congress in SF

April 24, 2015 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

In 2011 the buzz at the IP Business Congress in San Francisco was about the high cost of potential smart phone patent deals.

Bankrupt Nortel’s sale of a portfolio for $4.5 billion was announced during or just after IBPC, and Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility was announced a few days later. Since then patent values and deal flow have been all over the place.

IPBC returns to San Francisco’s Palace Hotel June 14-16 to consider “IP Market 2.0,” a still robust but dramatically different environment for patent values and transactions.

“With significant changes taking place in both the US and global IP environments – whether through legislation, court decisions, heightened
logoregulatory scrutiny and, in Europe, plans for a unitary patent and court – IP market players face significant challenges,” notes conference organizer and IAM Editor in Chief, Joff Wild. “For those who can rise to them, there are many exciting opportunities ahead. But for those who fail to grasp the full implications of recent developments, the future could be bleak.”

IPBC Global 2015 will take a detailed look at the developing IP landscape in the United States, Europe and Asia, and at how it affects not only IP owners big and small, but also aggregators, investors and intermediaries.

Notable Topics

Notable plenary and workshop topics include: Inventor insights; The future of patent sales and acquisitions; How smaller entities can compete; Medtech; IP investors; developments in patent validity; Banking on it – a look at how the financial services sector is embracing patents; discussion of licensing standards; the view of NPEs; and new corporate realities. A full agenda with speakers can be found here.

I will be moderating “Banking on it” on Monday June 15 at 4:00. This workshop features panelists Sean Reilly, Associate General Counsel of the Clearing House Payments Company, a former USPTO examiner, and director of he Patent Quality Initiative; Andrew Ramer, Managing Director of Cantor Fitzgerald’s IP Division and former President of ICAP Patent Auctions; and Michael Chernoff, Chief IP Officer of MDB Capital Group, an IP investor. If you are attending IPBC please stop by for what will be stimulating discussion about a rapidly evolving sector.

Delivering the opening plenary is Hon. Michelle K. Lee, the recently confirmed Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Tesla-Wireless-Lightbulb-nikola-tesla-3362112-389-500Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Commissioner Lee will answer questions posed by a panel of patent stakeholders, including Brian Hinman (Philips, InterDigital, Verizon, Allied Security Trust and IBM) and James Pooley, former deputy director general for innovation and technology, World Intellectual Property Organisation.

For those who wish to attend the conference but have not registered, there may be a few spaces still open. Click here for registration information.

IP Hall of Fame Inductees

The 2015 IP Hall of Fame inductees will be honored at a gala dinner on June 15. They are US copyright scholar, lawyer and author Paul Goldstein; past president of the INTA and former chief IP counsel of Richemont Frederick Mostert; influential IP blogger and academic Jeremy Phillips; Australian IP lawyer Des Ryan; and, inventor Nikola Tesla (pictured).

For more information about the IP Hall of Fame click here. 

Image source: iam-magazine.com; fanpop.com

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Public IP Company Challenges will be Heard at IP Business Congress

May 19, 2014 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

Interest in public IP licensing companies or PIPCOs continues to build; so do supporters and skeptics.

With some 30 trading on various exchanges throughout the world, “PIPCO Challenges” will be among the 16 sessions featured at the 2014 IP Business Congress in Amsterdam, June 22-24.

IP CloseUp editor, Bruce Berman, (yes, that’s me) will moderate the session, which promises to be a lively one.

Room 1: “PIPCO challenges” – June 23, 2:05 – 3:35

The number of publicly quoted IP companies (PIPCOs) has grown significantly over the last few years. They employ a number of different models and have enjoyed mixed success.

  • Why go public in the first place?
  • Different PIPCO business models
  • Consolidation or expansion?

Moderator:
Bruce Berman, CEO, Brody Berman Associates

imgres-1Speakers:
– David Hoff, IP Investor
– Peter Hardigan, COO, Document Security Systems (DSS)
– Joe Beyers, Chairman and CEO, Inventergy (INVN)
– Phil Hartstein, President, Finjan Holdings (FNJN)

Other sessions at this year’s IPBC include: Cooperative Patent Purchasing, Building a World-Class Corporate IP Function, NPEs Under Attack, Deal Dynamics, Beyond Monetization, and The Next Battle Grounds.

More than 600 are expected to attend from the U.S., Europe and Asia, with more than 80 speakers. The IP Hall of Fame also will induct four new members at a gala reception on June 23 held at the Krasnapolsky Hotel.

The full program and speakers’ list can be found here.

Image source: ipbusinesscongress.com

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Cross-Border IP Deals Scrutinized at Asia IP Business Congress

November 13, 2013 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

“Cross-border IP deals: bridges and barricades” will be a featured topic at this year’s IP Business Congress in Singapore, November 17-19.

Securing a patent license or sale is never been a simple matter, even under the best of circumstances. There is due diligence to conduct, skeptical executives to convince, and details that need to be negotiated.

When one or more deal participants is a continent away distances need to be traversed and diverse IPBC2imgrescultures and legal systems understood. There also is the problem of time zones and travel schedules.

In spite of these obstacles the number, type and demand for IP-related transactions have increased dramatically over the past decade, so too has the range of participants and types of assets.

The line up of panelists for this important IPBC Asia session is as follows, with your intrepid IP CloseUp reporter, serving as moderator:

“Cross-border IP deals: bridges and barricades”

Moderator:

Bruce Berman, CEO Brody Berman Associates Inc

Speakers:

Robert Aronoff, Founder and Managing Partner, Pluritas LLC
Masanobu Katoh, Executive Vice-President, Intellectual Ventures
Ruud J Peters, Chief Intellectual Property Officer, Royal Philips
Joo Sup Kim, Vice President of Intellectual Property, LG Electronics Co Ltd

*     *     *

For a full IPBC Asia agenda, speakers and other details, click here.

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IP Leaders to Regard “Tipping Point” at Global Business Congress

May 29, 2012 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

Opening Session will Focus on Critical IP Developments & Directions

More has happened to cast the spotlight on IP rights in the past 24 months than in the previous 50 years.

With new legislation being enacted, court decisions weakening patents, anti-patent rhetoric, Pirate Parties gaining momentum in Sweden and Germany, and transactions generating billions for sellers, it is difficult to know if IP rights are in fact facilitating innovation and commerce or impeding it.

The Tipping Point, the topic of the lead session on June 25 at this year’s Intellectual Property Business Congresss in Cascais, Portugal, near Lisbon, will attempt to sort things out.

Discussing and debating developments affecting IP rights will be the heads of the EPO, USPTO, LES, Thompson Reuters, the Office of Harmonization, and the Rockstar Consortium (consisting of among others, Apple, Microsoft, Ericsson and Sony).

Moderating the discussion will be your intrepid editor, Bruce Berman. I look forward to seeing many IP CloseUp readers there, as we did at last year’s IPBC in San Francisco. If you are in Cascais, be sure to stop by and say hello, and don’t be shy about asking questions at the session, which will open the Congress.

The Tipping Point will provide those who attend a good opportunity to query heads of important IP organizations about where they think IP is now and where it is headed, and how we can keep it on track. I will have some questions of my own.

The tipping point defined, BTW, “is the critical point in an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development.”

Illustration source: patentdocs.org 

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Profs Say Patents Kill Innovation; Strategists Say They Frame It

September 6, 2011 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

The Great Patent Debate: A Session to Remember –

Those who attended the “The Great Debate” earlier this summer at the Intellectual Property Business Congress in San Francisco came away challenged and enlightened. A few, it would be accurate to report, were even startled.

For those who could not be there in person a video recording of the session is now available from IAM, the producers of the Congress. It also can be seen by clicking on the image below.

The session pitted Boston University and Berkeley Professors Michael Meurer and Peter Menell against 3LP Advisers consultants Ralph Eckardt and Mark Blaxill. Your humble correspondent had the honor of moderating and maintaining the Marquess of Queensbury Rules. (“No wrestling or hugging allowed.”)

It was a standing room only affair attended by more than 500. Even a broken pipe spraying water on dozens of audience members could not dampen the audiences desire to hear the firey pro and con. (The disruption is observable on the video.)

The net-net: Some experts believe that patents are damaging, even dangerous, and should not be treated like tangible assets such as real estate. Others believe that extracting value from IP rights like patents is a key to innovation and to competing successfully.

The session is worth seeing if you were not there or revisiting (without the umbrella) if you were.

Kill or Frame? — The Great Debate, San Francisco, 2011

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Video source: IP Business Congress

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The Great Patent Debate Will Kick-Off Day Two of World IP Business Congress in San Francisco

March 29, 2011 by Bruce Berman 3 Comments

Do Patents Help or Hurt Innovation?

Skepticism about the patent system is growing even as more businesses and people benefit from IP rights.

Recent passage of the biggest overall of U.S. patents since the 1950s does not seem to have meant much, and cries of “too much” patenting are still being heard. A recent story in  The Economist (“The spluttering invention machine”) underscores the issue.

 Are patents net positive for innovation and commerce, or are they merely a drain on them that fills the pockets of special interests? Why do many IP-rich companies want to see weaker not stronger patents?

Is the playing field for patents leveler today or does it still favor some holders over others?

“The Great Patent Debate” taking place at the Intellectual Property Business Congress at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel on June 21 will attempt to find out.

Participating in what is expected to be a heated discussion:  Michael Meurer, author of Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk, a controversial book which details a complex system run wild; Peter Menell, co-founder and director of The Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and a leading authority on patent law and practice who opposes the Property Rights Movement; and Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckardt, authors of The Invisible Edge, proponents of patent strategy for businesses and investors.

Blaxill and Eckardt are Managing Partners of 3LP Advisors, which advises Tessera (NASDAQ: TRSA), among the growing number of patent holders who actively monetize their R&D through patent licensing and litigation.

Moderating the debate will be your humble IP Insider, Bruce Berman.

States the IPBC program: “Some see [the patent system] as a crucial facilitator of innovation that underpins business success. Others are not so sure and regard it as an expensive hindrance to innovative companies.”

• Head-to-head debate

• Key assets or an expensive waste of time?

• Encouraging innovation or a brake on it taking place?

• Tweaking the system or fundamental reform

I hope some of you can make the IPBC in SF.  Held previously in Munich, Chicago and Amsterdam, and hosted by UK-based IAM, the IP Business Congress is the most auspicious gathering for patent strategy and monetitzation.

This year’s Bay-area inspired presentations, discussions and networking are sure to entertain as well as enlighten.


Illustration source: IPBC


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