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The perfect USPTO Partners for a Startup Business

Product Sourcing

Product sourcing is the process by which a business attains a product to sell. There are a variety of methods by which sellers source their products. Most sellers use a combination of methods including dropshipping, wholesale, print on demand, and custom manufactured.

Product Design & Development

Product development refers to the complete life cycle. This starts from market analysis to goes up to the final product launch. Product design is only a part of the cycle where the design of the product is created. The product developer supervises each stage of development.

Software Development

Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software development components.

Determining What a Patent Is Worth

In an ideal world, the patent process serves as “currency” for inventors, encouraging invention and the buying and selling of ideas. The challenge is that the buyers and sellers of ideas routinely disagree on their value, given the abstract nature of the asset and the inherent lack of comparable transactions. Figuring out how much exactly a patent is worth boils down to a handful of steps that are simple on their face and challenging to execute:

Determine the quality of the invention on which the patent is based—this is sometimes also thought of as determining the “importance” of the patent.
Evaluate whether the patent itself is well constructed.
Look at the market environment and marketing value of the patent.
Assess the patent term.
Assess the “prior art” scenario.

How Much is my Patent Worth?

Many different factors go into determining patent worth, such as the nature of the underlying invention, the length of time the patent lasts, the way it is used in product positioning and business financing, and the ability to open up new revenue streams from licensing and royalties. Taken together, these factors will drive the value of a patent as an asset on your business balance sheet and help you assign a price to your patent should you ever decide to sell.

FEATURED BUSINESS

We offer flexible support to make sure
your business runs Smoothly

Product Photoshoot

A photo shoot is a series of images that are taken, with the goal of obtaining images that can then be placed into post-production, or editing.

Web Development

Web development is the work involved in developing a Web site for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network).

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is the use of commercial marketing principles and techniques to improve the welfare of people and the physical, social and economic environment in which they live.

What Are Intangible Assets?

“Intangible assets” is a term used to refer collectively to the intellectual property of a business. Intellectual property (IP) includes a company’s brands, its proprietary business information (“trade secrets”), its patents, trademarks, copyrights, research and development strategies, licensing agreements, and so on. Other important intangible assets include a company’s approach to talent management (human capital) as well as databases, customer lists, product specifications, and manufacturing guidelines.

All intangible assets have value. Quantifying that value is challenging but is important to realize a fair price when a business is bought or sold. Almost all small businesses tend to undervalue their intangible assets.

How Much is my Patent Worth?

Market/Marketing

An assessment of the market into which the patented item is sold and the market positioning of the product or process is critical to determining the value of the patent. How large is the market in which the patented product or process plays? How saturated is the market? What sort of sales can be expected, and for how long? Just as important, you should determine how well has the patented product or process been marketed and how well-positioned is it in the marketplace? Aggressively promoting the patented idea, and your ownership of it can be just as important to the value of the patent as the actual invention. Patent marketing companies exist to assist inventors with this and using one can make a critical difference in patent value.

Factoring Legislation and Court Activity Into Patent Value

Another important factor in determining the value of a patent is whether legislative and court activity in the patent law area could affect the validity of the patent and shorten its life.

Under the America Invents Act, there are processes through which a party can request that US PTO review the validity of another party’s patent. These “inter-partes review” (IPR) and “covered business method review” (CBR) processes have become common since they are faster and cheaper way than a lawsuit to challenge a patent and they have a high “kill rate” on

patent claims with less legal fees. Considering whether a patent could be vulnerable to an IBR/CBR process is relevant to its value. Some experts refer to these challenges as “death squads” for patent claimants, but their frequency does appear to have fallen slightly in recent years. Also, patent valuators need to keep an eye on court cases. For example, the landmark Alice Corp. vs. CLS Bank case from 2014 called thousands of patents in the software industry into question with its holding that patents cannot claim abstract concepts without adding anything inventive. Also, in recent years there has been an on-again, off-again debate about the possibility of patent reform, and what that could mean for the value of existing patents. Watching federal court litigation in the patent area is important for anyone considering filing for a patent or buying or selling one.

Importance of the Patent

To determine the importance of a patent, you need to look at what the patent protects. Is the invention groundbreaking, like the internal combustion engine, or is it an incremental improvement, like a new kind of squeaker for dog toys? For obvious reasons, breakthrough patents which protect brand-new technology or provide solutions to long-standing problems are the most valuable. A breakthrough patent often gives the inventor a monopoly over the new industry his or her invention creates, for the duration of the patent, and can be worth billions of dollars.

The degree to which a patent is incremental, and the importance of the underlying patented product or process, will determine the patent’s value.