Patent Law Practice Center

What every startup needs to hear about patents

Fatih Ozluturk is a prolific inventor, with 186 issued patents and 181 pending patent applications. His inventions have been licensed to every major cellular company, and have generated over $1 billion in licensing revenue. Today, Ozluturk is a Principal of the Soryn IP Group, and also Director of Patent Strategy at Liquid Patent Consulting. He is also an entrepreneur and an angel investor, he teaches workshops in the NYC startup community, and he is the author of the book “Patents. Simplified.”

I spoke with Ozluturk on the record in a lengthy interview that really should be required reading for anyone who is contemplating starting a software-based tech company. We discussed the importance of at least filing a provisional patent application even if you are not sure you want to get a patent, and we also talked about how easy it is to write software but how extremely difficult it is to write useful software. (more…)

A conversation about patent valuation and the market

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Efrat Kasznik (pictured left), who is President of Foresight Valuation Group. Kasznik specializes in performing valuations of intangible assets for financial reporting, tax compliance, transfer pricing, litigation damages and business liquidations. She is also starting to work with start-up companies at earlier stages in order to help them develop a strong IP portfolio and to prevent them from making mistakes that later cannot be fixed.

What follows are the highlights of my long form interview, which took place on Tuesday, December 23, 2014, and was published on IPWatchdog.com on January 7, 2015.

I spent some time discussing whether investors should seek patent protection or whether they should freely share their ideas, which is what some VCs actually recommend.

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Patented University Technology Creates Jobs

On Monday, August 5, 2013, the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) released the highlights of the AUTM U.S. Licensing Activity Survey: FY2012. The full results of the survey won’t be available until later this year, but the “highlights” release does provide some interesting quantitative information about licensing activities at U.S. universities, hospitals and research institutions.

Institutions responding to the survey reported startup companies formed by 70 institutions employed 15,741 full-time employees. The survey also showed:

• 22,150 total U.S. patent applications filed (+11.3%)
• 14,224 new patent applications filed (+7.2%)
• 5,145 issued U.S. patents (+9.5%)
• 5,130 licenses executed (+4.7%)
• 1,242 options executed (+7%)
• 483 executed licenses containing equity (+16.1%)
• Total license income: $2.6 billion (+6.8%)
• 705 startup companies formed (+5.1%)
• 4,002 startups still operating as of the end of FY2012 (+1.9%)

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