Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Patent Acquisitions – What’s Behind Them

If recent news is any indicator, patents are extremely valuable assets! During 2011, Nortel Networks Corporation sold 6,000 patents for $4.5 billion to a technology consortium that included Apple, Microsoft and RIM. Shortly thereafter, Google bought, in one of the largest patent deals in history, more than 24,000 patents and patent applications from Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Since 2011, IBM has sold more than 2,000 patents to Google for an undisclosed price. And now, Kodak, under the mandate of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, is trying to sell 1,100 of its patents for $3 billion.

Patenting Food Products and Manufacturing Processes

Many manufacturing companies overlook the opportunity to patent aspects of their products or specialized manufacturing processes. This is especially true in the natural products industries, where unusual ingredients are often mixed together and specialized production processes are increasingly required to make food products and dietary supplement products that are acceptable to consumers. In most natural product categories, it takes substantial innovation for manufacturers to be able to produce successful functional and natural food or supplement products.

Towards a Strategy of Valuing Patents as Intellectual Capital

Patents are a major force in the world economy, and one of only a few metrics commonly employed to gauge the tides of new ideas and innovation that are driving our economy. Even with the present declining rates of R&D investment, leading nations spend over $1 billion dollars each day generating intellectual property.

Patents Can Protect Formulations and Processes (PDF)

Many manufacturers overlook the opportunity to patent aspects of their food products or specialised manufacturing processes. This is especially true in the natural products industries, where unusual ingredients are often mixed together and specialised production processes are increasingly required to make successful products. In most natural product categories, it takes substantial innovation for manufacturers to be able to produce successful functional and natural food products.

The Possibilities for Patenting Supplement Formulations (PDF)

Intellectual property, and in particular a patent, is critical to protecting product formulations. Patents are the ‘holy grail’ of such formulations, and if a company owns a strong patent it has a limited monopoly in the marketplace that allows it to prevent competitors from copying or otherwise trading on its recipe or formulation for the term of that patent.