This is the second in of a pair of postings on aggregate SEP royalties and shares of those received among licensors. The first article, published yesterday, is an update on how much in royalties are paid and how these have declined, with a reminder on why these are so much lower than maximum rates headlined. This second article is on how these payments would be reallocated with the European Commission’s proposed rate setting using the top-down approach based on simplistic patent counts. I’m doing this to show the hypothetical extent of such reallocations and who the winners and losers would be ..read more

This is the first in a pair of articles on standard-essential patent (SEP) royalties. It updates my previous publications on this topic over the last decade to show how royalty payments have trended including how rates compare against licensors’ touted maximums. The second article shows how these royalties would be massively reallocated to Chinese companies with the top-down approach in rate-fixing regulation proposed by the European Commission. Aggregate royalties paid to major SEP licensors Ericsson, InterDigital, Nokia and Qualcomm have declined by 28% in nominal terms since peaking in 2015 ..read more

IP Finance is pleased to have this guest post from Dr Janice Denoncourt, professor at Nottingham Law School.   One of the biggest British tech deals involved Autonomy, a software company created in 1996 by former Cambridge University academic Mike Lynch.  The British and American litigation that ensued highlights the need for wider discussions regarding reforms to accounting for nebulous intangible assets such as software, copyright and licences.  How are these valued, accounted for and reported in company annual reports?    With hindsight, the evidence showed tha ..read more

Jon Cohen at Science has an interesting and informative article titled, “Accusers’ bad math: NIH researchers didn’t pocket $710 million inroyalties during pandemic,” published on June 5.  The article addresses allegations that government scientists made $710 million in royalties on COVID-19-related technologies.  Those allegations raise an interesting conflict of interest issue.  The article is definitely worth a read to provide some clarity to the controversy.  The article does note that government researchers did receive around almost $37 million in royalties during a thr ..read more

The Silicon Valley Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society is holding a webinar on Wednesday, July 17 at noon to 1:00 pm US Pacific Time titled, “Data Monetization and Valuation in the Age of AI.”  The speaker is Efrat Kasnik, LES-SVC Chair, LES Board Member and President of Foresight Valuation Group.  Here is a registration link: FREE REGISTRATION. The following is a description of the webinar and speaker bio: Program: Want to leverage your data and other digital assets for funding, growth and exit? In the age of AI, data is one of the most valuable assets for technology compani ..read more

An economist in the audience asked my panel on “transparency” at the Patents in Telecoms and the Internet of Things conference in London recently about achieving this by demanding detailed company financial disclosures. This is my first of two articles on topics in my wheelhouse that were addressed at this superlative biennial event.  Rough judgments Companies are generally unwilling to reveal such accounting figures that would help show how royalty costs are passed on and where profits are generated. Furthermore, some major value transfers are non-monetary and would not show up in these ..read more

Pursuant to the 2020 Trademark Modernization Act (TMA), the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report examining fraud at the U.S.Trademark Office.  The GAO made recommendations to the Trademark Office to reduce the number of fraudulent trademark registrations.  The GAO reviewed the impact of changes made by the TMA and stated: Based on our analysis of USPTO data for the period December 21, 2021, through June 27, 2023, we found that the USPTO Director and trademark attorneys representing their clients used the TMA’s new expungement and reexamination procedures to r ..read more

Nikkei Asia has published an article by Kenjiru Suzuki titled, "Japan's Universities Fail to Make the Most of Intellectual Property: Due to Lack of Support, Patents Only Make 2% Compared to U.S. Schools."  The title provides a nice summary of the article's findings.  Research has pointed to differences between countries and their innovation systems as to why a specific country may not experience the relative success of U.S. universities in technology transfer.  For example, there may be differences in university culture, laws concerning taking a company public, corporate formati ..read more

US Department of Justice announced the indictment of former Google employee for stealing AI related trade secrets.  The press release states: A federal grand jury indicted Linwei Ding, aka Leon Ding, charging him with four counts of theft of trade secrets in connection with an alleged plan to steal from Google LLC (Google) proprietary information related to artificial intelligence (AI) technology. . . . According to the indictment, returned on March 5 and unsealed earlier today, Ding, 38, a national of the People’s Republic of China and resident of Newark, California, transferred sensitiv ..read more

The United States Patent Office has issued Guidelines on AI Assisted Inventions.  The press release concerning the guidelines provides: To incentivize, protect, and encourage investment in innovations made possible through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and to provide the clarity to the public and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) employees on the patentability of AI-assisted inventions, the USPTO has published guidance in the Federal Register. This guidance delivers on the USPTO’s obligations under the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustwort ..read more