As 2019 gets underway, it seemed like a good time to sit down with Y.P. Jou, the founder and CEO of InQuartik and a recognized leader in the patent industry, to get his perspective on some of the trends that look to shape the year to come.
Could you share your thoughts on the year ahead in terms of patents?
To my mind, the biggest story of the year regarding patents can be summed up in one word—Quality.
This is especially true for the patent transaction and litigation markets. If I may be so bold as to say, these markets will be revolutionized in 2019 by Patentcloud, the advanced patent intelligence platform that our company InQuartik has created and developed.
That’s a very big claim. Could you expand on this?
Sure, I’d be happy to. Let’s start with the patent transaction market.
Revolutionizing the Patent Transaction Market
In the past, when patent holders were preparing claim charts, very few of them would actually check all of the prior art.
Why was this?
Several reasons, including the time and effort needed to do so, not to mention the expense. In addition, in the past, there was simply no easy way to show—or check—patent quality.
And the claim charts that did get prepared were, in fact, often quite limited, lacking important details, like backward citations.
This meant that patent holders often did not really have a full understanding of the true quality of their entire patent portfolios. As a result, low-quality or even worthless patents were often bundled together and sold or licensed.
This sounds like a particularly bad deal for patent buyers and/or licensees.
Many times it was.
Fortunately, Patentcloud is bringing transparency to the data in the patent transaction market.
In fact, Patentcloud delivers instant insights into patent quality, not only for an entire patent portfolio via the Quality and Value Rankings delivered by Patent Search, but also for specific US patents via Quality Insights.
Armed with these insights, potential buyers or licensees can actually challenge patent holders and insist that only high-quality patents be offered for sale or for licensing. In other words, with Patentcloud, potential buyers or licensees can now insist on higher-quality patents.
As I’ve often said in the past, patent quality is the key. Without an understanding of patent quality, determining the value of a patent or even the price of a patent cannot really be done accurately.
Would it be fair to say that the information and insights that Patentcloud delivers can actually make the patent transaction market healthier, thanks to the transparency it provides?
Yes, that’s a fair assessment.
With Patentcloud, both the seller and the buyer (or the licensor and licensee) can now know the true quality of a patent?
Whereas in the past, when this was very difficult to determine, it can now be done in an instant, with Patentcloud.
This means that negotiations can start from a new place—a place of knowledge shared by both sides.
Is this only for US patents?
Actually, Patentcloud provides insights on patent quality for the major patent markets, such as the US and China, and this year, it will begin to deliver rankings for the EU and Japan.
As for US patents in specific, Patentcloud’s Quality Insights can provide a comprehensive overview of a selected US patent, including foreign patent family, legal status, and backward citations, and semantic prior art, amongst other key information. With Patentcloud, a potential buyer or licensee can quickly gain an overview of an entire patent portfolio in an instant, thanks to the Quality and Value Rankings in Patentcloud’s Patent Search, and then take an individual patent and really drill down deep into it, thanks to Patentcloud’s Quality Insights.
To put it simply, Quality Insights is a game-changer. With just one-click, potential buyers and licensees can understand the true quality of a patent, which greatly enhances their buying or licensing position.
So, Patentcloud can help both sellers and buyers (and licensors and licensees) in the transaction market?
Yes!
Patentcloud enables sellers and licensors to truly understand the quality of the patents they have. This means they can make deals more quickly by offering their quality patents from the beginning.
For potential buyers and licensees, Patentcloud provides them with a tool not only to gain an overall evaluation of an entire patent portfolio (no matter how large it may be) but also to go in and gain an understanding of the true quality of individual patents at a deeper level.
The days of buying or licensing low-quality patents, especially in large bundles, may soon be gone, thanks to Patentcloud.
Overall, with Patentcloud and the transparency it provides, the patent transaction market will operate more efficiently, and more deals (and better deals) can be made more quickly. As I mentioned before,
I believe that Patentcloud will revolutionize the patent transaction market.
