Title
How to Make a Patent Market
Author
Mark A. Lemley, Stanford Law School, and Nathan Myhrvold, CEO of Intellectual Ventures, former CTO of Microsoft, and founder of Microsoft Research.
Date
4/24/2008
(Original Publish Date: 8/1/2007)
(Original Publish Date: 8/1/2007)
Abstract
Imagine a stock market in which buyers and sellers couldn't find out the prices at which anyone else sold a share of stock. If you wanted to buy (or sell) a share of stock, you'd have to guess what it was worth. The result, everyone would agree, would be massively inefficient. Willing buyers and sellers would often miss each other. Patents, however, exist in just such a blind market. Want to know if you're getting a good deal on a patent license, or acquiring rights in a technology? Too bad. Even if that patent or ones like it have been licensed dozens of times before, the terms of those licenses, including the price itself, will almost invariably be confidential. Patent owners who want to put their rights up for sale face the same problem.
Link