Expert IP Management and IP Based Financing
We are innovators and inventors ourselves.
We advise innovators ranging from large publicly traded companies to early stage startups and to universities on the management of their IP portfolios. It is always the case that innovators are not only competing against others in the field but also have to overcome shortage of time, staff, and capital. For most of these companies, a thoughtful and systematic architecting of their IP portfolio is lower priority than meeting deadlines, getting customers, or raising money – until the company actually needs its IP portfolio to fulfill its purpose as a defensive or strategic asset, which is often too late to start thinking about IP.
At Armada we are entrepreneurs, technology developers, and innovators ourselves. We understand the challenges the innovators have to face. By providing expert advice and IP portfolio development experience, we enable innovators to focus on innovating while being assured that the IP portfolio is being planned and built in lock-step, and that the portfolio will be ready when the company needs to rely on it to defend its products or to rely on it as a strategic corporate asset.
Our team works with a client company in the capturing, prioritizing, and protecting of intellectual property. We devise a forward-looking IP strategy and work with the company to steer the IP portfolio to the desired future state.
In those situations when a company’s business and products are heavily dependent on proprietary know-how and intellectual property, and when the company is in need to financing, we may be able to offer financing as an additional option. Even for those companies that are well capitalized, financing based on their IP portfolio is an attractive option. Financing can take the form of equity or credit financing, or somewhere in-between.
IP Asset Creation and Investments
We are entrepreneurs. We understand the challenges.
Of all innovators, early stage startups are the most vulnerable to mismanagement of their key intellectual property and the potential loss of potentially valuable rights. Every startup is short on resources and time – there is no exception. It is unfortunately the case that as everyone in the startup is entirely focused on getting another customer, raising another round of funding, or closing another deal. That’s the only way for a startup to survive and succeed. There is almost no opportunity for a startup to have the internal attention, expertise, or the time to adequately consider their long term IP strategy, and to make the best decisions within the resource limitations they have. By taking on the IP side of their business and by assuring mistakes that lead to permanent loss of valuable IP are avoided, we give startups the piece of mind and confidence that as they succeed their IP portfolio will be there to bolster the company’s commercial success.
Armada reviews the startup’s business and products, and identifies the differentiators that can successfully be protected by a judiciously built IP portfolio. Not every innovation is worth spending resources to try to patent, and not every innovation may be a patentable invention. By focusing on those key intellectual property assets that can be adequately protected within the current workings of the patent law, we assure that the scarce resources of the startup are spent where it makes sense.
We are able to provide financing to those startups whose business or products are heavily reliant on their intellectual property and whose enterprise value is strongly correlated by their IP portfolio.