Being a patent holder is a challenge. Selling a license to an existing company is tough. And it’s getting riskier, based on recent court rulings, to hold onto patents. A NYC-based incubator has moved to DC and has a plan for launching 15 companies this year.
AKT IP Ventures sources patents and creates companies around them, then sells them off to larger entities within 18 months. Development, marketing and sales teams support the company built around the patent. AKT IP founder Nicolas Chaillan started the incubator a year ago and created several companies. (Five have been launched since June.) The Supreme Court struck down patents last year on a computer program that reduces risk in financial transactions. Federal trial courts followed by rejecting software patents. Nicolas recently moved to DC to be closer to the federal government and to explore synergies. The incubator was set up at 1300 I St NW.
Patents are sourced from patent portfolios, universities and inventors (AKT IP sees about 40/week) and about 10% pique ATK IP’s interest. The incubator, which makes a seed investment, negotiates for the patent’s licensing or to transfer the IP to the new company that will be created. The inventor gets 10% to 20% of equity in the company and then a check once it’s sold. The new company created around that product gets marketed in up to 12 countries as proof of concept and viability.
Nicolas, whose dog, Monk, joins the community of DC tech dogs, says his goal is to launch 10 to 15 companies this year, focused on mobile apps, wearables, IoT, medtech and health. One of its projects is Genome.Care, software that predicts the side effects of medicine based on a person's genome. The incubator also launched WaitListOrdering.com, a mobile app that allows restaurant patrons to place their order while waiting for a table.
Update: AKT IP Ventures raised a targeted $20M fund to invest in the creation and operation of the 10-15 new IP-based businesses it wants to launch, and to expand its existing portfolio companies. The fund was finalized just after our original story was published.
