September 1, 2011

Qualcomm has long been one of my favorite intellectual property companies, for two reasons. First because back in the late 1980’s and early 90’s I worked for a small start-up company named Uniplex Corporation, where we were developing spread spectrum CDMA-like wireless technology for the 902-928MHz unlicensed band. I remember tracking technical articles that Qualcomm published and was always impressed by their research and the technology the company patented. Many years later I covered the company as an analyst in the investment banking industry and was equally impressed by the licensing and royalty revenue stream that they developed as a mature company. With all the recent activity in regard to the purchase of Nortel’s patents and Google’s pending purchase of Motorola Mobility I thought it would be an interesting analysis to compute an estimated value of Qualcomm’s patent portfolio.  

August 16, 2011

Building off the previous article on patent valuations, this article addresses the valuation of patent infringement awards.  Valuation guidelines for settlements in patent infringement cases have largely evolved out of what has been allowed by the courts, but fundamentally the analysis and calculation of damages still rest on a similar market and financial examination as that presented in the previous article.  Unlike other damages involved with other tort lawsuits, intellectual property infringement cases need not prove that material damages occurred to the patent owner.  All that must be shown is that an infringement occurred. Once that is proven then “damages” can be awarded.

August 15, 2011

With all the recent press surrounding the purchasing of patents I thought it would be useful to summarize the methods for calculating the value of these transactions and attempt to show a framework around rational valuations. Of course, in reality the market for patent purchases doesn’t always work rationally.  But by leveraging the market and financial research techniques and the fundamental valuation techniques I applied as an analyst in the investment banking industry as well as my experience through the boom and bust years of the dot com era, I hope to provide not only some pragmatic insight, but also a perspective on when valuations leave the rational framework.  Ultimately each patent valuation analysis is unique and, similar to corporate valuations must typically include detailed market and financial research beyond the summaries presented below.