IP Monetization of Intellectual Property

The Industry Knows Sherwood and Sherwood Knows the Industry

Intellectual Property (IP) arises from the combination of human thought process and know-how in a unique way to confer some form of advantage to the owners of it. Often IP appears in the form of proprietary technology and as such is worth protecting and safeguarding in the same way as any other valuable corporate asset. Monetizing IP is the process of deriving value from the development of the IP or technology in question. We refer to it as gaining a “return on innovation” and recognize there are a number of pathways to deriving such value in practice.

Principally there are two broad paths: 1) deriving value through spinning off new companies that focus on building out the market infrastructure for products and services based on the IP, and 2) reaching out to global partners and enterprises to offer licensing opportunities in specific fields of use that leverage off the IP. In each of these cases specific skills and abilities are required, and knowledge of IP management practices are needed to ensure real value is achieved by proceeding down either path. These skills include product management, business development, sales, marketing, quality assurance, documentation development, strategic partnering, planning, as well as the formalisms that apply to the patenting, trade marking, and licensing of the IP itself.

There are many examples of IP owners in government, academia, and industry who have focused intently on the creation of the IP with comparatively little understanding of how to monetize it. Often this is characterized as “technology push” winning out over “market pull” in the early development of product line strategies and plans. This often leads to a situation of “stranded innovation” in which a significant investment has been made to engender novel IP, yet the IP is surrounded by an expertise vacuum that prevents the owners from deriving a reasonable return.

Sherwood Partners has traveled down all the paths over the past ten years to ensure clients gain a return on innovation. This includes everything from launching products to patenting pure “know-how” to leverage IP to the benefit of our clients.

The technology/IT and life science industries know Sherwood and Sherwood knows the industries. We have successfully sold IP which greatly enhanced the investment and credit communities.

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