The Problems with Patents and the Impact on the Investing Public (pdf)

Date:  Mon, 2001-07-23

Local company could gain from heat on analysts

Date:  Fri, 2001-06-22

June Conference Will Examine Legal Issues in Financing High-Tech Companies

Date:  Thu, 2001-05-31

May, 2000 For many internet and high-tech companies, their most valuable assets are copyrights, patents and other intellectual properties. A two-day conference set for June 15-16, 2000 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Portland will examine legal issues involved in valuing a company

M·CAM’s CEO testifies at U.S. House hearing on Patents

Date:  Thu, 2001-05-10

May 10, 2001 Rayburn House Office Building Testimony of Dr. David Martin, CEO, M·CAM Inc. I would like to thank you and your distinguished colleagues on the Judiciary Committee for giving me an opportunity to address the topic of patent quality in the United States. While once deemed badges of intellectual honor, patents have become the currency of the U.S. and global economies. Echoing the debates over a currency standard 100 years ago the United States Congress now faces an issue much more challenging than a decision on gold or silver. The basis of our economy, no longer tangible metals, is now the national product of the human mind – innovation. The protection of this precious asset is the basis for the intellectual property laws of the United States and the developed world. However, in the past decade we have seen the erosion of confidence in patents. While many conveniently dismiss this as inevitable because that which is intangible cannot be measured, I will provide evidence that confidence is evaporating because the assets are indefensible due to egregious inadequacies in patent prosecution and examination. In January 2001, on a single trading day, one U.S. company and its investors lost over $330,000,000[1] as a result of misappropriated reliance on U.S. Patents. The patents that Transkaryotic Therapies Inc (TKTX) owned had significant deficiencies in uncited prior art which were overlooked in prosecution and examination. Relying on uninformed patent advice and confidence afforded by questionable patents, they challenged the validity of patents held by Amgen and lost. Our company, using our web-based patent examination system published a projected outcome of this case in November 2000 before anyone in the securities industry or in the courts would commit to the probable direction of the decision. Careful examination of the protected intellectual property in this case show that the TKT deficiency was avoidable had the U.S. Patent Office thoroughly examined prior art. The whole of USPTO

A History of the United States Patent Office

Date:  Tue, 2001-04-17

Intellectual Property — Restructuring the Economy

Date:  Mon, 2001-04-16

Patent Cafe Monday, April 16, 2001 M·CAM was founded to bring order to the chaos of the knowledge economy. Having inadequate systems to assess ownership, insufficient models to assess value, and incongruent policies to ensure protection of intellectual property, the world

Protection of patents vital for new economy

Date:  Sat, 2001-04-14

By: Zeng Min China Daily, Page 2 April 14-15, 2001 Trapped by a lax attitude towards patent protection, Chinese companies and institutions are being urged to strengthen patent applications and protection overseas so that they can compete more effectively on the global stage. Experts on intellectual property rights yesterday said doing nothing to solve the problem will limit the expansion of the vitally important knowledge-based economy. They said it is time for more awareness of patenting as China is expected to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO) later this year, which will commit it to global rules, including the protection of intellectual property rights. “That will put Chinese firms in the hot seat,” said Wen Xikai, a senior research fellow a the State Intellectual Property Office. Wen said Chinese firms must develop cutting-edge technologies and patent them at home and abroad without delay. “Otherwise, they will have to use outdated technologies developed by foreign firms to avoid violating global laws on the intellectual property rights after we join the WTO,” said Wen. “Picking up the leftovers will put them at a disadvantage in the global market.” In the last decade, Chinese enterprises have applied for more than 4,000 patents in 32 countries and regions worldwide, and 2,400 of them have been granted, official statistics said. However, China currently owns less than 5 per cent of global patents, said David Martin, president and chief executive officer of the US-based M·CAM Co, which specializes in patent protection. “This figure is too small for a country like China, which has thousands of years of history and has long been a major force of innovation,” said Martin. A lack of awareness about patenting new inventions abroad is mainly to blame, said Guo Shoukang, a professor of intellectual property rights protection at the Law School of the Renmin University of China. Although China received more than 170,000 patent applications last year, Wen said about 60 per cent were from foreign companies. Meanwhile, many Chinese firms who apply for patents in foreign countries are related to updated designs of original products rather than completely new breakthroughs, said Wen. However, some of China’s large industrial groups, including the China Petrochemical Corporation (SINOPEC), an oil giant that ranked 58th on the Fortune Global 500 list in 1999, and the Haier Group, a home appliances giant, have upped the stakes. At present, SINOPEC has filed nearly 500 patent applications in 32 foreign countries and owns more than 2,900 domestic and foreign patents.

IPR protection urgent

Date:  Fri, 2001-04-13

China Business Times April 13, 2001 According to the President and CEO of America’s M·CAM Co., many technologies developed in China are patented by other country’s companies, causing losses for China equal to about $1b. China will face increased trade barriers after entering WTO, so protecting IPR is crucial.

M·CAM CEO Advocates for Chinese Patent Quality Initiatives at National Conference

Date:  Thu, 2001-04-12

Intellectual Property Protects China’s Traditional Cultural Heritage

Date:  Thu, 2001-04-12

People’s Daily April 12, 2001 Ancient Chinese history recorded some of the greatest inventions in the world at that time. Now, in the age of globalization the patent system needs to be used to protect China’s traditional cultural heritage. An international seminar on the “Application and Protection of Intellectual Property” was held here Wednesday. Experts from home and abroad held that strengthening the intellectual property rights system is urgently required in China, in order to promote traditional Chinese culture and explore its potential value. Experts pointed out that intellectual property has become a new form of currency in world trade. It is now vital to control intellectual property on technological, biomedical and production processes — more vital than controlling the physical means of production itself. Pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe are obtaining patents at the rate of thousands each year. The materials and methods of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) are of great interest to these companies. A complete survey and analysis of the components of TCM and its modern development would be sensible. The purpose of such a survey would be to identify and create patents on irreplaceable medical technology before it becomes widely applied elsewhere. Japanese interests expropriated a unique cloisonne production method from its Chinese home. The method had no patent protection in China or elsewhere, and its cultural and economic value to China has greatly diminished. Japanese business subsequently filed patents restricting China’s ability to enjoy the economic value of its own assets. Treatment that evolves from traditional methods and unique techniques should be considered as an important contribution to national economic and social progress and should be protected by patents. “Imagine if the science of acupuncture, which has been widely adopted worldwide, was subject to intellectual property control by China. Now extend that image to other methods and products of Chinese inventions. One quickly can see the potential size of the markets involved, in every technology sector,” said David J. Pratt, vice president of the M·CAM Company in America. A Chinese official said, China has for a long time had the largest numbers of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers in the world. Add to that the practitioners of TCM, the scholars, craftsmen, artisans and businesspersons in all fields. Clearly, there is an immense national heritage to protect and defend. China passed through its first Patent Law in 1984, and revised it last year. In past years, the Chinese patent system has protected unique cultural items from inappropriate exploitation on world markets. Up to now, a group of high and new technology enterprises with independent intellectual property and competitive abilities have been available through technological renovation works dominated with patent achievement. The famous Haier Group has conducted the most patent applications among the enterprises in China during the subsequent years.

M·CAM Model Identified by U.S. FASB in Reporting Guidance

Date:  Sun, 2001-04-01

April 1, 2001 [Excerpt] Full Report

Amazon’s Grasp on One-Click Patent May be Slipping

Date:  Wed, 2001-03-14

Game, asset and match

Date:  Tue, 2001-01-02

M·CAM and the School of Engineering

Date:  Mon, 2001-01-01

University of Virginia School of Engineering January, 2001 The availability of competitively priced debt and equity financing for small start-up technology businesses continues to constrain the growth of technology nationwide. Historically, the most formidable obstacles that confront a start-up company are a lack of access to capital and a limited cash flow. Commercial lenders, often avoid the start-up technology market entirely, or at a minimum demand an accelerated repayment schedule that, given the financial constraints and management difficulties associated with new businesses, typically result in under-capitalization and a high risk of failure. Mosaic Collateral Asset Management Inc. (M·CAM) is a new corporation formed with the goal of providing lending institutions access to a markets that, to date, have been inaccessible to traditional lenders and investors. M·CAM offers banks and investors a guaranteed purchase price for intellectual property owned by a loan applicant. This effectively allows the bank to treat intellectual property as collateral. The range of assets considered by M·CAM includes patents and associated licenses; marketing and distribution rights; trademarks and copyrights; trade secrets and marketing plans; and hardware, equipment and other unique assets. Research being conducted by systems engineering professor Peter Beling and his colleagues with M·CAM focuses on improving the accuracy and objectivity of the valuation process. The central task in this work is the development of mathematical models to predict the likely value of intellectual property, relative to comparable assets for which market valuations are known. The automated prediction capabilities of the models allow M·CAM to limit the scope and number of judgments required of evaluation officers, resulting in a faster and more objective evaluation process. The initial phases of this work were conducted under a $30,000 Innovation Award from Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) and M·CAM’s parent company, Mosaic Technologies. CIT recently honored this project as “Best University Research and Development Project” in a statewide competition. We are continuing this work under a $600,000, three-year award from M·CAM. The focus of this award is the development of methodology for long-term updating and improvement of M·CAM’s models.

M·CAM, Swiss Firm Join to Insure Intellectual Assets

Date:  Fri, 2000-09-08

By: Reed Williams The Daily Progress September 8, 2000 M·CAM Inc. said Thursday a new partnership provides the financial backing and cachet it needs to convince banks it can turn companies’ intellectual property into hard assets to be used as loan collateral. David Martin, M·CAM’s founder and chief executive officer, said the Charlottesville firm has teamed up with Swiss Re New Markets, a division of Swiss Reinsurance Co., to value and insure companies’ intangible assets. “It is going to provide a new form of far-less-expensive capital than has been available to rapidly growing and well-established companies,” he said. “They just don’t have [conventional] collateral.” M·CAM will use its largely automated asset valuation model to put a price on these assets, Martin said. Companies will go to the bank and apply to have their intellectual properties, like patents or copyrights, analyzed by M·CAM in hopes that the bank can lend against them. If a company goes bankrupt and can’t repay a loan, M·CAM and Swiss Re New Markets cover the expense and seize those assets, perhaps reselling them or otherwise capitalizing on their worth. This way, at least in theory, the bank would recoup its investment. “We have carefully considered all angles of this highly complex risk and have created a coverage facility that will help enable M·CAM’s [intellectual property] asset collateralization to become commerical reality,” William Hoffman, associate director of Swiss Re New Markets stated in a news release. Robert A. Moorefield, area president of SunTrust Banks Inc., expressed interest Thursday in using M·CAM’s model. “Our bank has looked at the concept for underwriting intellectual property,” he said. “We like it, and we think it has merit. We think that at a point in time in the future we can make the concept work.” For the past several months, M·CAM has been working to establish credibility for its nascent concept in the eyes of banks. M·CAM announced in February that Marsh USA Inc., a risk-management firm, backed its model. Marsh USA is a subsidiary of New York-based Marsh & McLennan Cos., a Fortune 500 insurance company. In June, M·CAM announced San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., which sells information-gathering and systems-integration technology, would consult M·CAM in intellectual property matters. “It’s a good time to be a private company,” Martin said. “We have been willing to move more efficiently to partner with big companies at a time when some [public] companies are responding to market frustrations out there.”

Insurers Try to Keep Up with the New Economy Through Novel Products

Date:  Thu, 2000-09-07

By: Pamela Sebastian Ridge The Wall Street Journal, Page A1 September 7, 2000 Swiss Re New Markets, a part of Swiss Reinsurance Co., Zurich, teams up with M·CAM, Inc., Charlottesville, Va., a firm that analyzes the value of intellectual property, on a niche insurance product for banks and other lenders. They hope to encourage banks to consider intangible assets, such as intellectual property, as collateral for loans. M·CAM appraises a firm’s intellectual property and together with Swiss Re insures that amount. In the event of a loan default, the bank would get the insurance payout. Separately, insurance broker Marsh, a unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos., New York, develops a performance bond to protect people doing business on the Web. The product is similar to a bond carried by a contractor to guarantee work is done. The idea, says Marsh, is to bring a higher level of comfort to people who do business on the Web but never actually meet. As electronic businesses mature, look for more niche products, says the Insurance Information Institute, New York.

M·CAM and University of Virginia Share Virginia Center for Innovative Technology Innovation Award

Date:  Fri, 2000-09-01

Two Startup Companies are Defying the Odds

Date:  Mon, 2000-07-03

By: Lorri Montgomery Inside Business July 3, 2000 Over and over, we hear the discouraging statistics of the success rate of small businesses — less than half make it to their first anniversary. Because I personally can’t do much about the failure rate of new businesses, the least I can do in this space is bring you some good news about a couple of rather young businesses that are defying the odds, M·CAM and Nascent Technologies. M·CAM is a Charlottesville-based company that has grown beyond its founder’ initial optimistic projections and has taken some unpredicted turns. In the past several months, M·CAM has started attracting the attention of national movers and shakers. On the public-relations front, an article written by the company’s CEO David Martin was featured in the June issue of the online publication Entreworld (www.entreworld.com). In addition, David Paulson, M·CAM’s vice president of risk management, is featured in this month’s issue of Risk Magazine. But one of the company’s biggest breaks came last month. Martin, who was featured in an INSIDE BUSINESS article last June, met with members of the congressional Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs to talk about what they do. “We believe it’s quite an honor to be asked to participate in these discussions,” said David Winer, M·CAM’s chief operating officer. “They wanted to hear how our system works.” That’s because M·CAM’s concept is revolutionary, its timing serendipitous. It’s writing the blue book on technology. M·CAM has devised software that calculates value for intellectual property, such as patents, copyrights, and trademarks, and continues to recalculate that figure through the property’s lifetime. The software, primarily developed for banks, helps bankers put price tags on a business’ intangible assets, which can then be used as collateral for loans. The Federal Accounting Standards Board also is looking to M·CAM for advice, Winer said, as are members of professions that M·CAM had not expected to hear from. “The banking side is moving on track, but some other things have accelerated beyond what we initially imagined,” Winer said. Attorneys and accountants have approached the company expressing interest in certain aspects of M·CAM’s software capabilities. “They have looked and said they could really benefit from maybe one piece of the software,” Winer said. At the moment, M·CAM is working with 10 banks, compared to one last June. The banks are in-state and out-of-state. “We are talking to some very large national banks, but most of this we can’t disclose just yet,” Winer said. The demand for services has resulted in tremendous growth within the company. M·CAM’s workforce more than quadrupled in the past six months, growing from four employees in December 1999 to 18 today. “What the world is telling us is that the need [for M·CAM’s accounting methods] is greater than we expected,” he said. Another startup, Nascent Technology Solutions, is also on the move. Much has changed since INSIDE BUSINESS wrote a story in February 1999 about the small company that invents solutions for highly technical problems that other companies can’t solve. In the words of Nascent founders, Chris Domack, Ron Todhunter and John Companion, they do it by “building electromechanical and precision prototype devices that no one else builds.” One of their specialties is inventing miniature working versions of much larger high-tech equipment. For example, Nascent developed a welding-inspection device that reveals cracks or problems in space-station parts. The current X-ray technology calls for bulky equipment that is barely portable and requires body shields because of radiation. Nascent’s device is about the size of a cigarette pack and is entirely nonhazardous. In the past year, Nascent has landed several prestigious contracts, locally and nationally. One of its largest includes several projects for Boeing. Closer to home, Nascent helpded build a 35-foot-long wind tunnel for the Denbigh Aviation Academy, which can be used by people around the country via the Internet. As a result of these and other projects, the company’s staff has increased by two employees, but one of the partners, Companion, left Nascent to branch out on his own. In January, Nascent moved from its humble beginnings, a small office near Newport News/Williamsburg Airport, and into much larger and more comfortable surroundings in the Hampton Roads Technology Incubator. “We are doing really well and working on some exciting projects,” Todhunter said. “Unfortunately, the most interesting and unusual project is one we can’t talk about yet.”

Forum on Taxing E-commerce Sales Ignites Debate

Date:  Sat, 2000-07-01

Chamber Comments July-August, 2000 Charlottesville City Council Chambers was the scene of a spirited panel discussion on “Internet Taxation.” Chamber Chairman Bob Moorefield served as moderator. The panelists were Delegate Paul Harris, member of the national Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce; representing the technology sector, David Martin, President of M·CAM and the Chamber’s Technology Roundtable Chairman; representing the public sector finance and County of Albemarle, Melvin Breeden, Director of Finance for the County of Albemarle; representing the regional retail sector, Ron Martin, President of Ron Martin Appliance and the Chamber’s Retail Roundtable Chairman. Delegate Harris agreed with the majority of his committee’s opinion that the moratorium against Internet taxation should continue. This, he said, would help ensure the continued growth of the new high-tech economy and give small, Internet based companies a chance to develop and compete. All panelists agreed they were against “taxing the Internet.” Ron Martin stated, however, that is was intellectually dishonest to include the required collection of already existing taxes (such as sales and use taxes) when discussing whether or not to “tax” the Internet. Brick and mortar merchants are already required to collect sales tax and pass it on to the State, thus increasing the cost for a consumer to do business with them. Such merchants wish a level playing field. Martin pointed out that it is simply not fair to require retailers to collect state taxes when selling a certain product while at the same time freeing an Internet retailer from the requirement of either collecting the sales tax or furnishing information which would allow the state to collect the tax on that same product. Melvin Breeden indicated the state and local jurisdictions would increasingly lose revenue if Internet sales are to grow as projected. Inevitably, this revenue would need to be replaced or services cut. From the technology sector, David Martin agreed with the point that the requirement that brick and mortar merchants collect taxes which Internet merchants are exempted from is unfair. He expressed deep dissatisfaction with the existent complexity and lack of fairness in the current system of business and retail taxation. Martin pointed out that the very fact that the cost of doing business can change drastically from state to state and even from locality to locality in dependence upon tax codes is an example of the inherent unfairness in the traditional tax system. His desire is to see companies making use of new technologies, like the Internet, and doing business in those new technology environments, no be subjected to the current “antiquated” tax system. “We need a new model,” says Martin, for a business environment that no longer recognizes borders.

How Do You Shrink 19 Hours into 2.5 Seconds?

Date:  Tue, 2000-06-27

On Thursday, July 27, 2000, The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) held a roundtable meeting in Arlington, VA to discuss and identify ways of improving their internal examination of computer-related business method patents. USPTO officials disclosed that their examiners take an average of only 19 hours to review prior art per patent application, with a maximum review time of no more than 31 hours. The annual cost to the USPTO of doubling this review time was estimated to be $270 million dollars. Due to severe limitations in their spending authority, the USPTO cannot currently afford this option. Given the lack of time and resources, USPTO examiners are often unable to perform a truly complete search of prior art. At the roundtable meeting, USPTO officials asked for ideas from third parties on how to improve their technology and access to prior art. We have an idea. M·CAM, the global leader in intellectual property monetization, has developed a revolutionary process and technology implementation to perform a complete prior art search on patents in less than 10 minutes. Sometimes as fast as 2.5 seconds. No joke. This technology can be of tremendous value to the USPTO, and many others. Please contact us