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Intellectual Property Exchange International, Inc. (IPXI), the world’s first financial exchange for licensing and trading intellectual property (IP) rights, announced that on Friday it successfully closed its first two initial offerings of unit license rights. The offerings are based on patent rights to prepaid stored value card (SVC) technology owned by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Trading on the contracts can now take place on the IPXI Trading Platform.
IPXI President and Chief Executive Officer Gerard Pannekoek said: “We are delighted to price our first offerings and usher in the start of trading – the result of years of preparation, extensive consultation with the world’s leading IP experts, infrastructure-building and market education. This is a significant milestone, particularly as it demonstrates that companies are willing to voluntarily license valuable technology without litigation.”
He added: “These are the first in what we expect will be a long line of offerings involving well-vetted IP portfolios that together can make the one-to-many licensing model significantly more efficient for all parties, thereby reducing costly litigation, bringing much-needed transparency and enabling organizations to monetize their innovations. We anticipate a slow but steady build as those who have and need valuable technology begin to adopt this model. The SVC technology offerings are a great beginning, as many of the financial participants who are operational users are already adept at participating in financial markets.”
The SVC offerings are in the form of Unit License Right™ (ULR™) contracts. Created by IPXI, ULR contracts are standardized, exchange-traded, non-exclusive patent license rights. The contracts are priced and sold on a technology-unit basis to allow for easy monitoring of the adoption and use of the technology.
The initial offerings for the SVC ULR contracts were considered Tranche A, and the next issuance of the contracts, Tranche B, is now available on the exchange’s trading platform. Each standard contract – providing license rights to 17 U.S. patents and four U.K. patents filed as early as 1998 – represents the right to produce 100 stored value cards. According to industry resources, in 2014, more than $200 billion is expected to be loaded onto prepaid cards in the United States.
Trading is now open to both operational users – those who wish to license the technology rights – and professional trading firms and institutions interested in investing in and trading IP-based contracts.
In order to trade, qualified organizations can become Purchasing Members of IPXI at no cost and can begin trading on the platform after completing the necessary paperwork.
