Making a bid for monopoly power - IP auctions come to town; Canada seeks declaration of entitlement; In the War's

Alas, far too busy to get there himself, the IPKat missed the Ocean Tomo auction of intellectual property rights last Friday - the first such event to be held in London. Fortunately Managing Intellectual Property editor James Nurton was there (this might be something to do with the magazine being the auction company's media partner, suspects the IPKat) - and James has penned this report on the auction's results. In brief the sale raised some £4 million, of which more than half (£2.25 million, the highest sum yet bid in an IP auction) was paid for a single lot - US patent 5,895,454 for a method of internet shopping with a one-stop shopping cart.

Left: finding the shopping cart was easy - but Moggins just couldn't work out how to upload it on to the internet ...

The IPKat suspects that there will be an increased movement towards IP auctions, as individual IP rights are increasingly viewed as commodities in their own right and not merely as business tools in the hands of specific enterprises. He also reckons that, to the extent that the prices paid for individual lots are known and publicised, it will be far easier for licensors, licensees, purchasers, vendors, lenders, infringers and everyone else to develop an intuitive sense of how much an IP right is worth - though he doubts that the IP valuation industry is about to be put out of business. Merpel says, keep an eye on what the institutional investors are doing: once the pensions funds are bidding, we'll know that IP auctions have come of age.


Patent agent Brett Slaney, of Blakes, (formerly Blake, Cassels & Graydon - the name which has all but vanished from the firm's smart new website) has warned the IPKat that, as of yesterday, 2 June 2007, the Canadian Patent Office now requires a declaration as to how the named applicant(s) is/are entitled to apply for and be granted a patent.

The amended rule requires that the petition (or subsequent declaration) indicates whether the applicant(s) (i) is/are the inventor(s), (ii) employs the inventor(s), (iii) can apply under an agreement with the inventor(s), (iv) has an executed assignment from the inventor(s), (v) enjoys the inventor'(s)' consent to apply, (v) owns the invention under a court order, (vii) is entitled to apply under a specific type of transfer of entitlement exists and (viii) has/have changed its/their name(s). So if you're seeking a Canadian patent and any of these listed events applies to you, don't wait to be told - just let your Canadian representative know.


Always pleased to see the fruits of other bloggers' labours, the IPKat has just been browsing this site: IPwar's - the weblog of Warwick A Rothnie. For the record, Warwick is a distinguished IP enthusiast with a long track record that straddles the subject's academic and professional dimensions.

Initially thrown by the apostrophe in the word IPwar's, the IPKat decided that it must be a contraction of the elements IP (=intellectual property) + war's (=of or pertaining to War[wick]). Merpel speculates, shouldn't the legend read, in relevant part, "the weblog of Warwick, A Rothnie"? After all, Warwick is definitely and verifiably a Rothnie ...
Making a bid for monopoly power - IP auctions come to town; Canada seeks declaration of entitlement; In the War's Making a bid for monopoly power  -  IP auctions come to town; Canada seeks declaration of entitlement; In the War's Reviewed by Jeremy on Sunday, June 03, 2007 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. Hi IPKat

    Very interesting link re the IP Auctions. Incredible how the process is still in its infancy. From the figures given and looking at Ocean Tomo's website I'd bet that there is a lot more money and IP changing hands off the auction floor (ie out of public view): anyone care to guess how much? (10 : 1 ratio?). The other thing is that there didn't seem to be any classification of the IP: was it all patents? It would be interesting to know whether or not other forms of IP are being sold eg Bowie Bonds?

    Any links to folks who might know about this sort of thing?

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.