Unlocking the Hidden Value of IP Assets in Early-Stage Technology Startups
Here we stand in the heart of Silicon Valley, attracting a lot of early-stage startups due to its status as the largest global investment hub.
This upcoming CHIZAI (IP) seminar will feature an interactive roundtable discussion among four seasoned IP professionals that outlines a multi-step methodology for maximizing the contribution of “inchoate intellectual capital assets” to the enterprise value of early-stage tech companies, as follows:
Step 1 – Identifying & cataloging the key IP value-drivers;
Step 2 – Establishing an integrated legal protection plan for patentable inventions, trade secrets, proprietary data and brands;
Step 3 – Valuing the IP assets, individually and collectively; and
Step 4 – Communicating to prospective investors and potential corporate acquirers, the contribution of the IP assets to both current and future enterprise value.
This will definitely be a must-hear event for individuals such as startups founders, investors, and supporters within the startup ecosystem, as well as IP professionals in companies and law firms, seeking insights into the IP strategy crucial for navigating the future expansion of new business areas.
This marks the first in-person event for 2024. We will host it at the recently inaugurated “Japan Innovation Campus (JIC)”, a hub connecting entrepreneurs, investors, and supporters. Please come together to meet new friends and old friends!
Date
Friday, January 19, 2024, from 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm (Pacific Time)
Location
Japan Innovation Campus
(212 Homer Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301)
-There are public parking facilities in downtown Palo Alto. For details:
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/Transportation/Parking/Parking-Facilities/Downtown-Parking-Facilities
-10-minute walk from Caltrain Palo Alto Station
Schedule
3:30 pm : Registration open & networking
4:00-4:05 pm: Opening
4:05-5:05 pm: Roundtable discussion on a multi-step methodology with Jeffery, Jim, Steve, and Ron
5:05-5:25 pm: Discussion and QA
5:25-5:30 pm: Closing
After the seminar, we are planing to have a no-host networking at nearby restaurants.
Speakers:
Jeffrey Bartholomew
James Pooley
Steve Krawczyk
Moderator:
Ron Laurie
Profile of Speakers/Moderator:
Jeffrey Bartholomew
Jeffrey Bartholomew is a Denver-based attorney who guides startup and emerging companies through their life cycles, from formation to capital raising to exits. He also represents institutional investors (venture capital and other professional investors) as well as individual (“angel”) investors. A practicing attorney for over 30 years, he has represented clients in transactions that include mergers and sales of their businesses to private equity funds and strategic buyers, investments by venture capital funds, including an investment of over $200,000,000 in one of his startup clients, recapitalization transactions, licensing of technology and related intellectual property, and the organization and operation of investment funds.
As a former research engineer with a Dow Jones 30 Industrial Average corporation, Jeffrey is able to advise clients as to the value of intellectual capital—intellectual property legal rights as well as other intangible assets—that can provide competitive advantages to startup and emerging companies.
Jeffrey currently chairs a committee that is developing voluntary consensus standards that startup and emerging companies can adopt to manage their intellectual capital, reduce risk, and create value. The committee is a part of an initiative by the Licensing Executives Society, a nonprofit organization accredited by the American National Standards Institute as a standards development organization.
James Pooley
Jim Pooley focuses on trade secret law and management, as an advocate, advisor, testifying expert and neutral. He is an author or co-author of several major IP works, including his treatise Trade Secrets (Law Journal Press), the Patent Case Management Judicial Guide and the recently-released Trade Secret Case Management Judicial Guide (both published by the Federal Judicial Center). His most recent business book is Secrets: Managing Information Assets in the Age of Cyberespionage. The Senate Judiciary Committee relied on Jim for expert testimony and advice regarding the 2016 Defend Trade Secrets Act. From 2009 to 2014, Jim served as Deputy Director General of WIPO in Geneva, where he managed the international patent system. He is a past President of AIPLA and Chairman of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He is Chair Emeritus of the Sedona Conference Working Group 12 on Trade Secrets and Co-Chair of the Trade Secrets Task Force of the International Chamber of Commerce. In 2016 Jim was inducted into the IP Hall of Fame for his contributions to IP law and practice.
Steve Krawczyk
Steve Krawczyk is an attorney, investor and advisor based in Silicon Valley who specializes in working with companies aiming to develop their intellectual property portfolios in alignment with their likely markets.
He obtained his PhD in medicinal chemistry and joined Gilead Sciences back when it was a thirty-person startup. Working at Gilead, Steve began to appreciate the role IP had in building value for the company, he transitioned to the IP department, providing a much-needed bridge between the hardcore scientists, biz dev and the legal teams.
During this time, he earned an MBA degree and a JD from Santa Clara University with a specialization in High Tech Law, also serving as a Senior Production Editor on the Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal. Twenty-five years later, when by this time Gilead had become a Fortune 500 company, Steve decided to go back to his startup roots by becoming an Angel Investor and Advisor to promising startups, as well as more established companies.
Since leaving big pharma, Steve has built a portfolio of equity in promising startups through sweat equity and strategic investment and steadily honed his skills not only at identifying and meeting the needs of early-stage ventures in generating, protecting, and licensing IP, but taking on roles in technical, strategic and fundraising areas as well.
Steve is currently serving as an advisor to Level 42 AI, Magrathea Metals, and Blue Ocen Barns.
Ron Laurie (Moderator)
Ron Laurie has worked in Silicon Valley since before it had that name, initially as a systems engineer at Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., then as an intellectual property lawyer for thirty-five years at several major law firms, and most recently as an IP investment banking advisor focused on extracting maximum value from “intellectual capital” assets in complex corporate transactions including mergers and acquisitions, technology spin-outs and multi-party joint venture relationships.
As a lawyer, Ron was a founding partner of the Silicon Valley offices of Weil Gotshal, Irell & Manella and Skadden Arps. At Skadden, he founded and chaired the firm's IP Strategy and Transactions practice group and led IP teams in high-tech and life science deals worth over $50 billion in the aggregate. He has taught patent law and IP strategy at Stanford and UC-Berkeley law schools.
In 2004, Ron retired from Skadden to launch Inflexion Point Strategy, the first IP-focused boutique investment banking advisory firm. With offices in Silicon Valley, Toronto, Taiwan and Singapore, Inflexion Point advises technology companies and institutional investors in acquiring, divesting and investing in IP-rich companies, business units, technologies, and strategic intellectual capital assets in the form of patent portfolios, exclusive field-of-use rights, and related trade secret information, know-how and data.
Ron served as Executive Chairman and CIPO of InventionShare, Inc., a new kind of early-stage technology investment fund that transforms "platform" technologies applicable to multiple vertical applications and markets into globally deployed innovation with high social impact.
Ron served as an independent board member at Wi-LAN, one of the oldest and most successful publicly-traded patent licensing companies for six years. He is currently a Director and CIPO of Level 42 AI, a new-age medical device company that combines a patented vibroacoustic sensor technology with AI machine learning to accurately and rapidly detect a wide range of human biological conditions.
Ron chaired the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society for several years and served on the advisory boards of the Hoover Institution Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity (IP2) at Stanford and the Certified Patent Valuation Analyst accreditation program. He has been listed as one of the world’s leading IP strategists by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) Magazine every year since the listing was created in 2008.
