Background
Ocean Tomo was engaged by a venture capital firm to analyze a portfolio Company’s intellectual property and provide technical, market, and valuation consulting services. Our work was performed to support the venture capital firm in assessing the strength of the Company’s technology, future business plans, and whether the technology supports those business plans.
The Company’s IP assets included patents, know-how, and trade secrets. The patent portfolio covered cutting-edge smart repeater technology for the millimeter wave spectrum that was designed to enhance network speed and capacity. The know-how and trade secrets were complementary to the Company’s patent portfolio.
Ocean Tomo’s Management Consulting & Valuation practice collaborated with Ocean Tomo’s Specialty Services practice to deliver these comprehensive services, which included both technical and valuation specific elements.
Engagement
Ocean Tomo’s role on this engagement included a comprehensive technical review of the Company’s patent portfolio and supporting technology. With respect to the patent assets, Ocean Tomo established logical groupings and classifications, categorized the patents into general technology groupings, and assessed the quality of the patents within each technology group.
After the categorization and assessment of the quality of the patents, Ocean Tomo performed various market assessment services, which included:
• Identifying competitors and details surrounding their competing products
• Determining the relative strength of the Company’s IP assets relative to competitors
• Defining any competitive advantage offered by the IP assets to the Company.
Ocean Tomo’s work included interviews with industry experts and the Company to further confirm our findings with respect to the categorization of the patents, the importance of the Company’s IP assets and our understanding of the market.
Considering the technical and market assessments, Ocean Tomo consulted on potential monetization opportunities for the IP separate and apart from the Company’s current use. Ocean Tomo performed a landscape for the technology to identify top potential buyers based on recent investment in R&D and gaps in patent portfolios.
Results
With an independent assessment of the Company’s technology and market, the venture capital firm was in a much better position to analyze its investment and the Company’s future prospects.
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