Thought leadership.

Nancy Edwards Cronin is named to the IAM Strategy 300 list of the world’s leading IP strategists for IP value creation work.

Nancy Cronin’s paper explores aging in place, where senior care needs meet technology innovation and new intellectual property opportunity.

What is “Aging in Place”? Why is it important? “Aging in place” is exactly what it sounds like: remaining in your home as you grow older. Historically, the elderly lived with family as they aged. Today, this model has evolved to more prevalence of institutional care such as assisted living and nursing care facilities. However, there are multiple issues with this model, including high cost, inconsistent quality, lack of independence and control over one’s life, and little room for customization.  The COVID-19 pandemic also presented new issues with spread of disease and lockdowns that prevented family visitation and much needed socialization.

John Cronin explains how to stop copycat companies, from market analysis and inventive thinking to preparing actions against IP infringement.

The European Patent Office (EPO) recently denied an application in which the inventor was listed as DABUS, “a type…of artificial intelligence,” ruling that the inventor must be a human being. [1] Not only does this argument fly in the face of the history of invention creating, but also certainly in the future of same. Invention by machine is inevitable; it’s been with us in some form for decades and is accelerating quickly. The sooner we define the structure by which AI invention is acceptable, the sooner the EPO will be able to handle reality.

What does AI have to do with IP? Artificial Intelligence (AI) goes back to the 1950’s, as defined by Minsky & McCarthy, to be “any task performed by a program or a machine that, if a human carried out the same activity, we would say the human had to apply intelligence to accomplish the task”. This being the case, a lot has happened in almost 70 years since that statement. The history of AI can be easily researched; however, a reasonable definition can also be extracted from examples of how AI is being used and what AI is being used for.

In order to challenge you as an executive or an investor of a small or early stage company looking to leverage your value to (1) raise money, (2) be acquired, (3) enhance your market value, or (4) increase revenue, we will discuss how to create real value (for investors, the stock market, M&A, or monetization) for your company through the rapid development of a strategic intellectual property portfolio. For more than twenty-one years, we have helped hundreds of small and early stage companies create real value, and we have benchmarked the rapid development of a strategic intellectual property portfolio to demonstrate significant value. Interestingly, over this time, we have seen few executives or investors who understand this, and worse, many do not believe it is possible to create real value using intellectual property (IP).

Many inventors and companies wait until they have a granted patent in hand before finally asking themselves the question, “So now what?” From lean tech startups to Fortune 100 heavy hitters, patents are granted each week in the U.S. and abroad, raising questions to their owners like, “what exactly are the patents good for?”, “how much are the patents worth?”, and “how can any value be realized?” If you have invested time and money in your patents, these are undoubtedly the right questions to ask. The answers may be found in patent valuation.

Senator Patrick Leahy discusses the America Invents Act, PTAB review, first to file, and the patent policy changes he still wants to see.

In this episode, John explores the types of businesses that may or may not need intellectual property (IP), like patents and trade secrets. Learn whether your business needs IP to protect its business model, or if filing patents will just increase expenses. The topics in this episode include: Business Brand and Personal Brand Business Risk …

Peloton’s on-demand fitness patents were invalidated at the PTAB. What the Echelon win means for patent value and enforcement risk.

Written by John Cronin CEO and Chairman of ipCapital Group, inc. This article is also available as a PDF One way to innovate is to ensure that the megatrends are evaluated in your innovation processes. Megatrends, by definition, have shown they are customer-driven needs! Of course, there could be differences of opinions as to what …