Finding balance in an era of disruptive technologies by cross licensing patents.
Cross Licensing Patents
With the proliferation of patents, licensing is increasingly used to resolve issues between conflicting and competing patent owners. Cipher helps calculate what can be considered as fair for companies that seek rational and balanced outcomes by cross licensing patents.
On this page:
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It’s become feasible to maintain a dynamic analysis that’s constantly keeping you apprised of the total number of worldwide patents in a particular technology space, relative to your own portfolio.
Jeremiah Chan, Head of Patents, Meta
If these are your questions…
How can I justify what represents a fair licensing deal?
Whether planning internally or negotiating, evidence trumps ‘gut feel’ every time. The Cipher Optimisation Model enables you to map your patents to the revenue of others, and similarly their patents to your revenue. This identifies where there is imbalance and a means to calculate the overall position.
What is our exposure to counter-assertion?
Where your strategy is to monetise your patents by licensing, it is vital to consider both the approach and the consequences. Cipher can identify companies who are exposed, and also help ‘war game’ the outcome of a cross-licence, in situations where the other party owns patent assets that map to your revenue.
What’s the best way of countering a demand for a portfolio licence?
It has become common practice for large, often failing companies, to take a blunderbuss approach to licensing. Such approaches are accompanied by a demand that you take a licence of their whole (and typically large) portfolio. Cipher enables rapid and effective whittling to patented technologies of relevance – normally a significantly smaller list.
…then Cipher can help.
How Cipher can model cross licensing
1
Define cross-licensing strategy
Define cross- licensing outcomes, such as threat neutralisation, monetisation and quantify impact on patent risk.
2
Build “balance of trade” model
Having identified potential licensing partners, model the likely financial outcomes.
3
Actionable Intelligence
Seek internal consensus, implement an evidence-based approach to negotiation, and justify outcomes.
Explore how Cipher can help you to…
Deep-dive into technologies
How can I quickly understand a new technology area?
Develop a cross-licensing strategy
How can I use data to strengthen my negotiations?
Want to find out more?
Explore other ways Cipher can help you with cross-licensing.
“Because Cipher is an automated platform that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence, it is able to uncover companies of relevance, that we might never have discovered on our own.
Jared Engstrom, Head of Patent Development, Red Hat
Allied Security Trust (AST)
AST provides to some of the world’s most innovative technology companies with patent risk mitigation services, including patent acquisition, and is an industry forum for IP leaders. In 2018, Cipher launched Cipher n/d Powered by AST, thereby incorporating the AST Product taxonomy into Cipher as an Industry Module to support cross-licensing negotiations.
We are always looking for innovative ways to make the patent markets more transparent and efficient and we believe that Cipher n/d is an important step towards a more comprehensive and standardized visualization of the patent landscape for the entire industry.
Russell W. Binns, CEO, AST
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Data science and machine learning helps us better manage and shape our portfolio. The ML tools and models we’ve built have enabled us to operate more efficiently and at scale so that we can execute on our patent strategy.
Mike Lee, Director, Head of Patents, Google
Insights & Events
Management of Patent Risk
See how patent-owning organisations such as ARM, Infineon and Facebook deal with patent risk and discover why patent risk management is crucial to protecting your organisation’s greatest asset.
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Beyond portfolio optimisation – calculating the value of rightsizing
View our webinar discussing results of the Cipher Report on Portfolio Optimisation and the optimisation model that can help you balance your portfolio.
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Patent Risk Survey Key Findings
82% of patent owners will face patent risk in the next two years. Read the Key Findings of our global Patent Risk Survey to discover how IP professionals deal with patent risk.
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How Many Patents Are Enough?
Are you looking to optimise your patent portfolio but aren’t sure where to start? Read our article to uncover proven models that should act as rational and repeatable metrics to optimising your portfolio.
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Death, Taxes and Patent Risk
What is patent risk and how best should it be communicated to the board? At a time where 80% of a company’s assets are intangible, understanding all possible sources of risks is paramount.
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Case Studies
ARM on classifiers and managing patent budgets
Rob Calico, VP Litigation and IP, discusses the challenges of managing a sophisticated portfolio in a fast-moving technology environment, and how Cipher has helped them manage their patenting strategy and budgets.
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Ocado on balancing IP protection with mitigation of patent risk and conflict
Head of IP, Lucy Wojcik, talks about the need instant answers to who’s doing what and how Cipher helped Ocado implement a world class IP strategy.
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Red Hat on using the Cipher Optimisation Model
Jared Engstrom, Head of Patent Development, talks about the growth in Red Hat’s portfolio, how he has used Cipher’s custom classifiers and how the Cipher Optimisation model has improved their understanding of the competitive landscape.
Read more
Cross Licensing FAQs
Can the “balance of trade” approach be used for other strategic patent decisions?
Yes. The same methodology is used to support monetisation (both patent sales and licensing), patent acquisitions and Portfolio Optimisation. Find out more – AI in evidence based strategic IP decisions and How Many Patents are Enough?
Why should a counter-party trust Cipher patent intelligence?
The reality is that a manual review of thousands of patents is impractical from a time and cost perspective. When relying on data generated from Cipher classifiers, you will have confidence in the results, which can be freely shared. This level of transparency is disarming.
Does this replace ‘pick lists’ and ‘claims charts’?
Not necessarily. While market practice is changing, some organisations combine financial models with conventional approaches including identification of small sets of patents (pick lists) that can be evidenced to be valid and infringed by the counterparty (claims charts). Relying on subsets of a portfolio to establish the quality of the entire portfolio is increasingly disregarded.
With Cipher you can also…
Optimise your portfolio
Ensure you have the right portfolio to meet your strategic patenting objectives.
Gather competitor intelligence
Understand who’s doing what by automating patent to technology mapping.
Manage your budgets
Justify patent budgets to CFOs and others to communicate the impact of your investment.
Conduct due diligence
Automate manual reviews for efficient execution of M&A and licensing transactions.
Tackle inbound patent assertion
Be prepared with evidence to create a fast and effective threat assessment.
Benchmark your portfolio
Assess your portfolio in comparison to other owners through your own technology lens.
Monetise your portfolio
Identify opportunities to create value through licensing or sale of patent assets.
Predict technology trends
Track new technologies of today and discover the unknown owners of future disruptive innovation.
Why Cipher
Trained by humans, built by machine to give you independently verified accuracy
“Cipher’s classifiers enable you to understand the patent landscape or analyze a portfolio. Combining expertise in both IP and data science, Cipher provides you with solutions to the strategic problems patent owners face, with quick and accurate results.” Erik Oliver, Richardson Oliver Insights
