Patent infringement on a Fleet of Hybrid Vehicles

A few years ago, as part of an ongoing relationship with a major U.S. defense contractor, we were asked to run a monetization analysis on a large patent portfolio, to identify patents likely to produce revenue. The contractor has a huge, active R&D department, and at the time, their portfolio contained somewhere in the neighborhood […]

How and Why You Need to Strengthen Their Intellectual Property: 4 Powerful Strategies

patent portfolio strategy

At GreyB, companies often approach us with the broad objective of having us help them strengthen their IP position. It’s a challenge that incorporates elements of the three core IP research sectors⁠—finding prior art, patent analytics, and patent commercialization—and often involves creating a comprehensive patent strategy. Depending on their focus areas and preferences, businesses choose […]

Our Experience: Common Problems for Patent Review Boards and Our Processes for Solving Them

Especially at young, fast-growing companies, few employees are under more pressure than members of the Patent Review Board, or PRB—also known as a Patent Review Committee. Generally composed of scientists and engineers who’ve done time in the trenches of R&D, the PRB acts as a vital go-between higher-ups and engineers and scientists, translating executive direction […]

Are you using spreadsheets to manage your patent portfolio?

The utility, supply, and demand of IP have seen a significant shift in the last decade, and so has the way leading companies view IP. A decade ago, companies wielded IP more as a way to gain competitive advantage by excluding others, but today, the best IP strategy is to collaborate rather than confront. IP […]

How a Patent Monetization Analysis Helped a Major Asian Telecom Company Prepare to Defend Patent Infringement Lawsuits in the US

In 2017, we heard from an executive who was heading up a team that specialized in mobile and augmented reality-related technology at a large Asian telecom company. She had a troublesome problem having to do with patent monetization—the process of generating revenue from patents—which she couldn’t realistically solve herself. The researchers on her team were highly […]

The Case of winning an IPR at PTAB

patent litigation strategy

Old times were simple.  There was a plaintiff, who tried to sue a company, and then the company asked us to find some good prior art. We logged in to simple patent databases, many of which were free, entered few keyword-based search strings and poof! good results. Case settled. The client was happy, we were happy! […]

Smart Patent Monetization Strategies For Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises

Patent Monetization Strategies for SMEs

Since September 2012 the USPTO has been invalidating a majority of the patents for which proceedings have been initiated under the inter parties review (“IPR”) process. Statistics on IPR proceedings have been available since its inception. The current numbers are far from comforting to patent owners. Given these statistics, is there still a way to […]

Litigation Financing: A way for SMEs and Startups to Fight Patent Battles

Patent litigation poses multiple challenges for SMEs. If you have a large player using your technology, it is not going to be easy to stop them without going into litigation. Notices do not work when you have an army of lawyers on the other end. Secondly, for small entities like SMEs, startups, and individual inventors, […]

How Machine Learning and Chinese Craigslist Helped Invalidate a Decade-Old Patent

patent invalidation

In 2016, a major Chinese smartphone manufacturer came to us with a problem. The company was being sued by a competitor, also based in China, for patent infringement, and they would soon have to appear in court to defend themselves. The penalties for patent infringement can potentially be very painful—fines reaching into the millions of dollars, […]

How a Circuit We Designed Helped Solve a Prior Art Puzzle

In 2017, we were approached by an attorney representing a large manufacturer of digital and analog computer chips that we’ll call Chip and Dale Corp. Another chip manufacturer had recently contacted the company. We’ll call them Chip Off the Ol’ Block LLC. Chip Off the Ol’ Block claimed that Chip and Dale were using the […]