“Have YOU personally tried, punky ?”

Not sure what you mean.

If, do I have (or at one time had) a patent associated with trying to get a product to market, then the answer is “no”.

If, have I successfully set up arrangements along the lines I outlined above, then the answer is “yes’.

Many years ago TI embarked on a lawsuit campaign against any and all companies that happened to be using something within the scope on one or more patents in its portfolio. Many, if not most, of these defendants would never compete with TI or any of its subsidiaries, affiliates,etc. in any manner. TI’s program was designed specifically to extract “value” from its portfolio, nothing more and nothing less. For a while it was remarkably successful, at one point bringing in approximately one-half of TI’s reported profits.

In the end, however, the program withered away, not because everyone who could be sued had been sued, but because it was eventually realized the program was having a negative effect on its actual products/services base and was making it more difficult to pursue its business plans for the future. A classic “Rembrandts in the Attic” that for a while was a source of much financial joy, but in the end analysis came at a very heavy price that was not appreciated at the time TI embarked on the program of using its legal department as a profit center.

In contrast, I was able to form a team comprising various business disciplines (technical, program management, finance, product suppport, etc.) that actively sought out potential applications of high value technology in non-traditional markets that would NEVER be served by the corporation, to assist in the formation of an independent entitity for using the technology to create products and services for introduction into such markets, to assist in the hiring of highly qualified candidates as its first employess..candidates respected by VC groups who would likely facilitate VC investment, the transfer of needed know-how and show-how, the willingness to perform R&D on behalf of the new entity until such time as it was technically up to speed, on occassion permitting the movement of important personnel from the corporation’s employ to that of the new entity, etc. Easily the most difficult problem I faced with the corporation transferring the technology was to keep the “neer-do-wells” from insisting on management control of the new entity.

The bottom line? Several thrived are are now integral parts of other larger companies. Some fell flat on their face for various reasons. Still others remain as originally formed, but have established reputations in their market niches of being the very best at what they do.

So, assuming your question was directed to the latter of the two possibilities noted above, the answer has to be a resounding “yes”. Patents we not treated as mere paper, but as an integral part of what was used to help the new entity get up and running.

Given the choice between the TI approach and mine, I will opt for mine any day of the week. It represents a win-win for both the original technology developer and the new entity, a quite different outcome than building a business around merely filing lawsuits as a business model.