Top patent guns offer 'troll-free' way to cash in on IP

Inventergy, a Cupertino company led by CEO Joe Beyers, aims to help its clients monetize their patent portfolios.

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Cromwell Schubarth: Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal; Email | Twitter | Google+

A group of patent experts including Hewlett-Packard's former IP chief and the president-elect of the American Intellectual Property Law Association have launched a Cupertino startup that aims to make a lot of money on other's peoples' IP.
But don't call the folks at Inventergy trolls, according to founder an CEO Joe Beyers, the former HP exec.
"We represent people who want to monetize their portfolio in a professional and ethical way and we have the people who have shown they can do that," Beyers told me.
Beyers objects to the common notion that any company that isn't making or shipping products with the patents it tries to license to others is a patent troll.
"The issue is behavior," he told me. "We won't send out 8,000 demand letters or try to make money from patents that are weak or of uncertain value. That's how trolls behave and we are squarely against that."
In his nearly seven years at HP, Beyers said he overesaw a patent portfolio that was bringing in $35 million in revenue when he took over.
"After three and a half years it was bringing in $400 million and after that I wasn't allowed to say what the number was because it had grown so large," he told me. "That's what we want to do for our clients."
Inventergy last month disclosed that it raised $7 million in venture funds and Beyers said it is close to raising another $3 million.
But unlike other startups, Inventergy isn't using the money to develop technology or marketing. It is buying IP portfolios with the money and then shares revenue it gets with the companies it bought patents from.
Beyer and his team buy the portfolios, 100 to 400 assets at a time, from what he describes as large corporations who are leaders in big industries. Inventergy has one such portfolio it has acquired so far from a client Beyer declined to identify and is working on more.