IP Finance 2015: a special offer to our readers -- for a special event

"IP Finance" is not merely the name of this weblog -- it's the key component of the title of a very important conference taking place in New York, at the New York Palace, on Thursday 14 May 2015. The conference, "IP Finance 2015", is subtitled "Innovative Ways to Leverage IP Assets for Maximum Return", which should give readers a pretty good clue as to what it's all about. According to the conference website at www.ipfinance.us:

"Following its successful inception in 2014, Premier Cercle is teaming up with Institutional Investor Magazine and Managing Intellectual Property to organize a sequel to IP Finance that will showcase and discuss the best practices of patent holders, entitled, investors, bankers, financiers, PE, firms, regulators, plaintiffs and defendants which make the most of their immaterial assets and intangible capital". 

This leads to the event's credo that

"...  in today’s “knowledge economy” – after a century-long industrial revolution and a 30 year-long service economy – corporations are only now beginning to tap into the potential of IP, and that the recent multi-billion dollar deals on patent and trademarks portfolios and IP assets-backed financing have kicked-off a sustainable trend. We believe this innovative approach on IP -- as a new pillar of corporate finance -- is a rising trend that will consolidate and give a definitive edge to those who apprehend it now".

So how does this event contribute to this rising trend?  The first part of the programme takes a look at IP assets in terms of current strategies for dealing with them and matching those strategies up against the mechanisms available for implementing them now and in the future; it examines IP assets from the investor's perspective rather than that of the IP owner, then addresses the specifics of IP securitisation -- taking cognisance of the fact that different types of IP right require very different treatment.

The second part of the programme addresses the IP transaction and, in particular, the evolving role of financial transactions involving patents (just take a pen and jot down as many types of patent-related financial transactions as you can, and you can appreciate how much there is to discuss here).

Following a pre-prandial address by Intellectual Ventures co-founder and Burning the Ships author Marshall Phelps Jr on the topic "Deals of Distinction", the work aspect of the programme recommences with part three: "IP challenges".  These challenges include non-practising entities both as trolls and as triggers for innovation, litigation and how to finance it, and what are politely termed "disruptive events" such as Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings, judicial rulings such as Alice v CLS Bank, which suddenly raised questions concerning the validity of lots of software patents and applications that investors had been busily betting their shirts on, and the decisions of standards-regulating bodies.

There are several highly active experts on the programme. While it is always invidious to pick out names, two that immediately spring to mind as being worth a mention are Alexander I. Poltorak (General Patent Corporation) and Bruce Berman (Brody Berman Associates), both of whom have done much to raise consciousness of IP finance issues in print, in conferences and via the social media.

This blogger thinks the programme is a full and demanding one: indeed, he would expect nothing less from any event that his friends at Managing Intellectual Property are involved in [declaration of personal bias: this blogger founded that journal, was its original editor and is delighted to see that it is currently celebrating its 25th birthday].  Good news is that readers of the IP Finance weblog can attend this event at a discounted rate of $750 (a decent reduction from the official registration fee of $990). To register, just quote IPFMIP and email ipfinance@premiercercle.com.