Intellectual Property

Plextek provides expert assistance for companies wishing to exploit or assess intellectual property.

Intellectual Property Services

IP Evaluation for Investors

VCs, PE firms and corporate investors want to ensure that the businesses in which they are investing have strong, protected and defensible IP. Plextek is often engaged to determine whether these conditions are met.

IP Portfolio Refinement

IP protection is expensive and it is cost-effective for companies to periodically review their patent portfolio, particularly against a background of changing business objectives, markets, competitive landscape and regulation.

IP Infringement Clearance

Some clients want to ensure that they have a good knowledge of the IP landscape before embarking on a new product development.

Expert Witness Services

Plextek provides this service using its extensive skills base. Claimants or defendants in litigation engage Plextek to determine objectively whether they have a case and to produce supporting evidence. Such disputes sometimes go to court and we have provided experts to appear in the High Court of Justice.

Example Projects

  • Plextek recently worked for a Private Equity firm to assess the IP of a company in the intelligent traffic systems space that it was planning to acquire. The target company had a considerable patent portfolio which required a wide range of technical skills to evaluate. By analysing the patent claims and considering possible 'workarounds' Plextek was able to produce a detailed understanding of the value and strength of the individual patents.
  • An organisation with a very large patent portfolio engaged Plextek with the brief to eliminate patents that were either of low quality or fell outside the organisation's strategic aims. Some of the redundant patents were sold and others were simply discontinued.
  • For a leading supplier to the energy utilities market, Plextek identified approximately 100 patents that were relevant to a new product design that it had commissioned. Careful analysis reduced this to about ten key patents that the product would infringe. Advice was given on where it was more cost-effective to circumvent the protected prior art by design or to pay royalties to obtain usage rights.