Monday 2 March 2015

Patent ownership survey: please participate if you can

"Patents are generally regarded as the world’s most valuable intellectual property rights. It is, however, accepted that information available from public registers (maintained by over 100 patent offices around the world) is inaccurate". This statement heads a Patent Ownership Data Survey being run by this blogger's friends at Aistemos, whose CEO Nigel Swycher explains:
There is wide-ranging support for the view that patents are valuable assets, and that there should be greater levels of engagement from the banks, insurers and the financial markets more generally. The starting point in the evolution of all asset classes is however the need for markets to be establish who owns what. You would think that this is a no-brainer for patents -- a registered right with professionally managed registries, tasked with the responsibility for maintaining records of patent owners. 
Patent records can be
so frustrating ...
The actual position is very different. The information on patent registers is inaccurate. There are many reasons for this, ranging from data quality issues (there are 28 patents recorded in the name of _!) to the fact that it is not mandatory to record assignments, and many companies do not. In between, there is legal ambiguity ('CSR' is recorded on many patents in the world, and it is for the searcher to decide whether this is a Bluetooth company in Cambridge, a railway company in China or a mining company in Australia). Plans are underway to improve this position and Aistemos is conducting a survey to test awareness of the issue and the appetite for a solution. Please take five minutes to complete the survey and to circulate it to your network. The aggregated and anonymised responses will be published a part of a report next month.
Do participate in this survey and/or forward it to others if you can -- ideally by 14 March 2015. IP Finance looks forward to seeing conclusions drawn from the responses and will bring them to you.

To access the survey, click here.

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