Joannis ZagosPatent Valuation Expert Dr. Kiehne interviewed by TechTimes
InTraCoM Group valuates inventions, single patents, patent families and even corporate patent portfolios qualitatively as well as monetarily. With its valuation and analysis method it is one of the world leading companies for many years already.
On the occastion of the recently awarded "ACQ5 Award", the online magazine TECHTIMES talked to CEO Dr. Dierk-Oliver Kiehne.
TECHTIMES: Dr. Kiehne, the InTraCoM Group has received numerous awards from renowned institutions during the past months and years. What is behind the "ACQ5 Award" you have just received?
KIEHNE: ACQ Annual Award Programs recognise organisations and individuals that have achieved outstanding commercial success in designated areas of expertise. Their awards are the only industry honours given purely on the basis of voter participation. So each year, ACQ Magazine conducts polls among 168,000 readers - guided by the poll results those businesses and individuals that have had the greatest impact on the industry during the former year will be duly honoured.
TECHTIMES: This means you had no influence on the decision process of the award?
KIEHNE: Not directly. But indirectly, since the jury and the reader base of course, look at our work, our services, publications and decides whether a service provider is shortlisted or not. This is applicable for all awards, with slightly different selection processes of cause. At the "IAM300" Award you can not even apply yourself, this can be done only by the customer base, who must justify their application in detail and who are also interviewed by the jury laterwards. By the way, we also received the IAM 300 Strategies Award this year.
TECHTIMES: And how much did the participation cost?
KIEHNE: Many years of hard work!
TECHTIMES: Can you tell us what percisely the award was for?
KIEHNE: „ACQ5“ addresses the financial sector primary. This was not our primary market in the past, because typically very few patents are applied here. However, we were able to prove that patents, their values and their performance are important indicators of a company's ability to innovate. This makes it an important investment indicator. We have previously shown that patent portfolio values and their development over time are an early indicator of the company's share price performance. Also patents and their values often play an important, sometimes crucial role in activities related to "Mergers and Acquisitions". Here, we were able to significantly increase the sales value of companies and parts of companies by means of our neutral valuations. In one case even by a 3 digit million euro amount. The additional value was underlaid with patents. The same applies to corporate insolvencies: patents are rerely utilized by the liquidators as they often don't see a simple, fast and reliable way to value and sell them. In addition, we are also becoming increasingly active in start-ups or round financings when a company's intangible assets in form of patents are to be valued.
TECHTIMES: Coming to your unique selling point: How can you and your small team stand up to the big players in the industry?
KIEHNE: Over the past 15 years, we have developed a method that is unique in its form. It is an analogy method that is based on reference values of traded patents from the past. We use state-of-the-art algorithms and own software tools. This makes the process lean, very precise, fast and thus cost-effective for the customer.
TECHTIMES: Are the others less intelligent or just too immobile?
KIEHNE: Quite simply, the service providers that exist on the market are not software companies and thus lack the systematic approach. On the other hand, there are a number of software companies that are increasingly working on statistical analysis of patents and qualitative assessment of patents. But these companies are missing the practical relevance and market feedback from transactions. We combine both competences and have with our software affiliates the best prerequisites to transfer service experience into high-performance software algorithms in order to then offer services at the best quality and price / performance ratio.
TECHTIMES: And what's currently on your to-do list?
KIEHNE: What is always on the to-do list with us is the further development of our ruleset. There will soon be a few new features that will once again significantly increase the quality of the evaluation and the reliability of the forecast. We are also expanding our service portfolio: customers are often unsure whether their patent is infringed. You can imagine that this has an impact on the patent value also. Therefore, customers often ask us if we can find a potential infringement for them. Indeed, this can be done with moderate effort and a very systematic approach. And so far with amazing success. In some cases, we even offer success-based models here.
TECHTIMES: How do you see the current and future market developments around patent valuation?
KIEHNE: As described earlier, we are seeing many emerging companies now focussing on the statistical analysis of patents. This is also enabled by the increasing data quality that the patent offices now offer. Certainly the topic will become more and more relevant - the increase of market participants also raises the awareness of companies. The financial sector is also increasingly opening up to this topic, as we can see from the growing number of inquiries in this area. In particular, the fintech and insuretech companies who also own patents, are pushing the patent topic in sectors in which it has not yet played a major role. I'm sure there will be a lot going on in the next few years. Not least because the European Commission also wants to actively promote the topic.
Interviewer:
Heinz-Joachim Imlau c/o TECHTIMES Redaktionsbuero fuer technische Kommunikation Susannastraße 7 45136 Essen Tel.: +49 201-471230 Fax: +49 201-72948939 E-Mail: imlau@techtimes.de