Source: The Economic Times, Hyderabad edition, India dated 1st August 1, 2011.
It is better to do research yourself and come out with the invention and protect the same. The same is further affirmed by the company president Mr. Bill Slawski, that, “the patent is the fruit of a company’s efforts and you have been given a chance to develop technology and then actually do something with it”.
Further, if somebody has taken a patent on that subject invention, but if “X” does anything with that invention without the patentee’s consent or approval or permission, this “X” will be sued in the Court of law for infringement of the patented invention. Best thing is before “X” does anything with that invention, better he does an infringement search for the items he wants to manufacture and then proceed. Alternately better he takes or acquires those patents from the patentee or at least takes a license from the patentee and does the manufacture with the permission. Of course “X” may have to pay Royalty to the patentee, but nevertheless, “X” doesn’t have any headache now or “X” doesn’t have to face any court case.
Here IBM has assigned nearly 1000 patents to Google inc. and Google becomes the lawful owner now for these patents and can do anything with these patents.
Such assignments will have to be done with the knowledge of the particular patent office situated in the respective country. Here the USPTO is the respective patent office and so the assignor and assignee have approached the USPTO on July 11 & 12 for recordal of more than 1000 patents.
In this respect of licensing, there are factors one has to see and take decisions!!!!!!
The IP commercialization can be achieved through “licensing” the patents or other IP rights, and also the technical Know-how what you possess. The kinds of licenses are
1. Sole license
2. Exclusive license
3. Non-exclusive license
There are also royalty free licenses, wherein you require the permission from the patentee, but without any consideration whatsoever i.e., the royalty. You can also give cross license. The license granted only up to the term of the patent and not beyond that period. The expired patents cannot be licensed as the right ceases to exist. So it is very clear beyond doubt that the value of intellectual property lies in its commercialization and not in its mere creation and development alone.
Licensing is very helpful to an organization while dealing with bigger organization having leverage in negotiations. Further Licensing IP can be tremendously profitable. For example (statistics may be few years old details) to make one understand, how licensing is very helpful is the main idea.
IBM 1.7 billion US $
Texas Instruments 500 million US$
Stanford university 36.9 million US$
Thus Licensing IP can be tremendously profitable!!!!!!!!
