Licensing Patents

Licensing patents falls into two categories:“stick” licensing, where patent owners seek compensation for current use of patented inventions, and “carrot” licensing, where patent owners seek licensees willing to develop new products based on their patented inventions.

We engage in carrot licensing.

Most of our licensing projects are in the pharmaceutical and materials science industries. However, we will also consider licensing projects in other industries.

Our licensing projects follow four phases:

• Preparation: understand the invention, investigate alternatives, and prepare an information memorandum explaining the invention and its advantages over previous solutions.
• Marketing: contact potential licensees. We approach companies worldwide, both in the licensor’s industry and in other industries.
• Proof of concept: we assist the patent owner and potential licensee to confirm the value of the invention. This phase may involve the transfer of experimental material or apparatus to a potential licensor for evaluation and joint investigation.
• Agreement: facilitate negotiations for a license agreement between licensor and licensee.

These are usually long-term projects, taking more than two years.

In general, we work on a success-fee basis. Therefore, we only undertake projects for which we are well-qualified, and which we believe will be successful and able to offer a significant technical breakthrough.