The representatives of Ocean Tomo, the Chicago based firm in Patent Trading recently, according to their plan to make India a part of business, met Indian authorities including commerce and industry minister and apprised them of the latest opportunities in the field of IP and gave presentations including the importance of setting up a separate exchange. The news report in addition to above also spoke about the firm’s patent index of 300 companies, their database of 33 million patents and 4 million published applications and their new product called ‘Patent/Bid-Ask’ (PBA), a public marketplace facilitating buyers to place their bid and sellers to receive offers for their IP assets.

The firm, according to the news report, is understood to have submitted a proposal to the government of India to create the infrastructure for taking advantage of the value of IP, which the authorities are closely reviewing. The news report adds that the creation of infrastructure will entail education, patent analytics as well as connecting IP value and financial markets.

Valuation of an intellectual property through conventional financial methods is the prerequisite to trading. A patent valued is a commodity and a tradable business asset which when evaluated against the overall business strategy of the corporation can leverage IP as a source of funding and revenue. Leveraging IP portfolios as corporate business assets being tradable on an on-line IP exchange sounds like a new paradigm for IP but much progress has been made in this field and presently there are wide prevailing thoughts speculating the new profile for an IP trading exchange. Business managers have been mulling over whether the new millennium would belong to IP trading exchange. A Business management expert from a US Business school marks in affirmative but his opinion forms foundation on the strategy undertaken rather than the technological dimension of the on-line business.

The ‘strategy’ for having a vigorous trading of IP tradable assets, asks for innovating the existing business model by transforming it from having a heavy technological base to a platform for business networking where IP owners can be pro-actively approached to engage in trading their IP. This approach is also thought of bringing the small and big players together and thus reducing the financial gap. The ‘strategy’ is also about providing an added distinctive value to the customer. Information based platforms such as databases comprising patent information and tools for in-depth prior art search may chart a new pathway in terms of market transparency and background research.

While the above ‘strategy’ may chart a new course for IP trading exchanges in more developed economies, India being in an incipient stage in the IP commodification and trading has a lot to undergo. A Patent expert, according to the news report, is of the view that the IP trading in India entails first removal of resistance from conventional stakeholders on moral and ethical grounds and then identifying the tradable IPs and getting them valued before finalization of the rulebook on IP trading.

An IP trading exchange in India may offer a new perspective on the internationalization of business operations and with a growth oriented business strategy it may turn many of the patents just lying dormant into great sources of revenue by just bringing buyers and sellers together.