Article One Partners to Help Small Businesses Fight Patent Trolls

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Apr 2, 2013) - With small businesses being increasingly targeted by patent trolls, Article One Partners announced today a suite of new products that will give small businesses access to the same revolutionary crowdsourced patent research that large companies have used since 2008 to invalidate low-quality patent suits.

AOP will also offer a host of new products and services that will help serve a wider range of client needs, such as patenting, patent acquisition, in and outbound licensing, and mergers and acquisitions. In a sign of its rapid growth, the company will also for the first time offer guaranteed direct payments to its most dedicated corps of skilled volunteer researchers. 

Access to AOP patent research is critical for companies large and small because prior art is the Achilles Heel of any patent. A patent is valid only if the invention it covers is truly novel and nonobvious. The better the search for prior art -- i.e., any previous patent, technical paper, or public knowledge or use of an invention that predates the patent for that invention -- the greater the chance of defeating a patent infringement suit. Knowing this information when building or buying a portfolio creates bulletproof patents.

Prior art already invalidates nearly half of all patents asserted in infringement suits or re-examined during U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) post-grant reviews. The new AOP products will for the first time make this level of prior art research available to smaller businesses as well as to help worldwide brands with all of their search needs.

AOP's new FlashSource and ExpertSource will enable small businesses to access AOP's 27,000-strong community of researchers in more than 160 countries at a much lower cost than AOP's flagship CrowdSource product.

FlashSource provides clients with a high-level overview of the prior art necessary to assess patentability and invalidity. ExpertSource offers clients a much deeper dive into global prior art, giving them greater assurance about how best to respond to their patentability, licensing, and litigation challenges.

As noted, the new products come amid a series of moves by Article One to expand its use of crowdsourced research beyond litigation and serve other client needs such as patenting, acquisition, valuation, in and outbound licensing, and mergers and acquisitions. As AOP's founder and CEO Cheryl Milone explained, "We're a private-sector solution to the problem of low-quality patents. Higher-quality patents are good for business, good for the public, and good for supporting the original intent of the patent system -- to foster innovation, not litigation."

The new FlashSource and ExpertSource offerings -- including guaranteed compensation for AOP's most expert researchers -- are meant to compliment the company's ongoing work in the litigation arena, where it has earned a reputation for getting game-changing results. As Philips executive Ruud Peters noted in a recent Businessweek profile of AOP, "Because of [AOP], we could completely eradicate the [patent suit] against us." Philips paid AOP less than $100,000 to unearth the prior art, Peters said, but it saved the company many millions of dollars in litigation costs.

Patent value is predicated on quality, the primary focus of these AOP offerings. "As the need for confidence in patent quality increases we're responding with a broad array of options for our clients," says AOP's Chief Product Officer Peter Vanderheyden. "Small and mid-sized businesses are now the subjects of 65 percent of patent troll lawsuits," he noted, "and 41 percent of startups who've been targeted report that they suffered a significant operational impact on their business as a result.¹ To put it bluntly, smaller companies are crying for help to deal with this problem, and we are well positioned to respond."

¹ Colleen Chien, "Startups and Patent Trolls," Santa Clara University School of Law, Research Paper No. 09-12, September, 2012, derived from: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146251.

About Article One Partners

Article One Partners (AOP) has revolutionized the transparency of patent data. Today, AOP is the world's largest patent research community. The company has distributed requests for prior art research to more than one million scientists and technologists using a global online human search engine. AOP is active in 170 countries and is exceptionally successful in identifying non-textual and non-patent literature. The company is a partner to 16 Fortune 100 companies, 51 Forbes Global 2000 and 7 of the top 10 US patent filers. AOP's client satisfaction rate exceeds 90%.

AOP has a distinguished Board, led by Marshall Phelps, the former head of patents and licensing at IBM and Microsoft. Founded in 2008 by patent community leader, inventor and entrepreneur, CEO Cheryl Milone, the company's product offerings have been called "revolutionary" and "game changing" by leading authorities. In short, many consider AOP to be the new industry standard.