The eBay of intellectual property will launch this April, allowing Fortune 500 companies and mom-and-pop organizations to buy and sell technology patents both on the auction floor and online. The first large-scale, live intellectual property (IP) auction, initiated by Chicago-based merchant bank Ocean Tomo, will take place April 5-6 at the Ritz Carlton San Francisco and will be simulcast online. While only 15% of IP will be in the life sciences this time around, the second of the planned biannual auctions, to be held in October in New York City, will focus on biotechnology.
"It's something I'm really excited about," says Ronald J. Riley, president of Professional Inventors Alliance, a Washington, DC-based advocacy group. Riley described the current system as labor intensive and marked by inefficiencies. "The auction creates great potential for exposing the patent to all the players at once," he says.
The idea of an open marketplace for ...
