Extracting maximum value from patents

Meet Steve Steger:

In these challenging economic times, purchasers of legal services are becoming increasingly interested in performance-based compensation. Understanding this desire and seeking a challenge, an electrical engineering undergrad turned lawyer is flexing his entrepreneurial and legal prowess, running a firm that helps clients ranging from sole proprietors to the Fortune 500 in monetizing their patents.

Our Chicago OfficeLinks team would like you to meet client and friend Steve Steger, co-founder and managing partner of Global IP Law Group, an international team of attorneys in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific who have created a powerful and compelling approach to monetizing intellectual property (IP) for their clients. Specifically, his interest is in patents, which are the exclusive rights to an invention granted by a government to the inventor for a certain number of years. Steve and his team sell, license and litigate patents and other forms of intellectual property to secure the appropriate balance of value for their clients. Steve has a broad range of experience in private practice and as Chief IP Counsel at both large and small companies. He has developed IP policies and procedures for mature patent portfolios and for start-up IP management, built internal capabilities for management, licensing and prosecution of multiple patent portfolios, spearheaded the licensing of significant patent portfolios, and has been involved in patent monetization efforts, including litigation that have returned in excess of $50 million in value to his clients.

After hearing about Steve and his business, I decided to give him a call last week to find out more. From his Chicago office, Steve shared with me that individual inventors who are looking to sell their patents seek his services. That seemed straight-forward to me. He went on to explain that mid-sized businesses who may need to raise capital for operations during these challenging economic times are looking to their patents to generate that capital. And, large companies are also extracting value from unused patents.

It was my understanding that companies secured patents to protect their investment. Steve kindly validated my notion, explaining to me that essence of why a company would seek a patent is to protect the investment that the business has made to bring a product to the market; in other words, you are protecting that “thing” that gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. There are plenty of opportunities for businesses to protect their investment in innovation, but Steve explained that if the patent is not written correctly, the patent can literally be worthless. Well, that’s not good! So, I asked, what is a business to do? The answer was quite simple…hire a professional!

So, now the circle is complete. Use a professional to prepare and obtain your patent. That way, if you ever need to sell you’ll be sure to extract maximum value from your investment. We are proud to have a client like Steve in our Chicago office—he is working hard to help his clients obtain value from their assets. To learn more about Steve, his team and services that Global IP Law Group provides, click here.