Lawsuits Drive Patent Market

Rick Merritt
EETimes (8/1/2013 05:36 PM EDT)

FOSTER CITY, Calif. -- A market for buying and selling patents is emerging as companies file more patents and get hit with more infringement suits, said a panel of experts at a lunch event sponsored by the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society. But figuring out the value of a patent or the potential cost of litigation is still a black art, they added.

The patent system is still painfully imperfect, said panelists representing large and small product companies and two patent service providers. But a kind of patent marketplace is starting to emerge and companies are getting more savvy about how to use it, they said.

"We can build a full, robust IP strategy on a startup's budget and still have some of the same things we had at Apple," said Richard "Chip" Lutton, general counsel at startup Nest Labs and former chief patent counsel at Apple.

To read the full article, click here