Patent holders and potential buyers will gather at a tony San Francisco hotel, where a Chicago-based company, Ocean Tomo LLC, has organized a two-day event that will culminate in live bidding to sell 430 patents. The inventions, described in a 316-page catalog, are grouped into 75 lots covering patents in an array of fields, including an oilless lubricant, powdered bleach, a fat substitute and a way to reduce vibrations in auto transmissions. Values estimated by sellers range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $5 million per lot.
Private auction-style transactions for particular groups of patents are relatively common, as are public patent auctions as part of bankruptcy proceedings. But a live event, with many different sellers and buyers, is a new wrinkle in the increasingly complex and contentious world of intellectual property. Backers believe the concept could forge a new path to profits for patent holders, short of resorting to the litigation that is often necessary to persuade infringers to pay license fees.

Posted: 03|15|06 at 10:28 am. Filed under: US News.