Lawsuits Drive Patent Market

Rick Merritt
EETimes (8/1/2013 05:36 PM EDT)

FOSTER CITY, Calif. -- A market for buying and selling patents is emerging as companies file more patents and get hit with more infringement suits, said a panel of experts at a lunch event sponsored by the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society. But figuring out the value of a patent or the potential cost of litigation is still a black art, they added.

The patent system is still painfully imperfect, said panelists representing large and small product companies and two patent service providers. But a kind of patent marketplace is starting to emerge and companies are getting more savvy about how to use it, they said.

"We can build a full, robust IP strategy on a startup's budget and still have some of the same things we had at Apple," said Richard "Chip" Lutton, general counsel at startup Nest Labs and former chief patent counsel at Apple.

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