Article One Partners Announces Marshall Phelps as Chief Executive Officer

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Oct 22, 2013) - Article One Partners (AOP), the world's largest patent research community, today announced Marshall Phelps as the company's new Chief Executive Officer. Cheryl Milone, founder of Article One Partners and former CEO, will remain Chairman and focus on company strategy. As the former Corporate Vice President of IP Policy & Strategy at Microsoft and former Corporate Vice President of IP & Licensing at IBM, in addition to his role as an AOP Director for the past three years, Phelps is well positioned to lead Article One as the company continues its evolutionary growth.

"Article One Partners is situated at the cross roads of crowdsourcing and patent quality, which allows us to provide assurance that issued patents are of high quality," said Phelps. "AOP has already proven its ability to resolve patent quality issues for hundreds of clients, from Microsoft and Philips to many small and medium sized businesses."

Since its founding in 2008, AOP has broadcast its studies to over one million people and grown its research community to include more than 30,000 patent researchers from 170 countries. Researchers have received more than $4.6 million in rewards to date for their work on over one thousand client patent studies.

"Patent quality is one of the biggest problems facing businesses in the world today," said Phelps. "It is at the core of patent system abuse to the point of damaging global innovation."

Article One Partners' prior art research is used to help companies defend against litigation, build their portfolios, conduct due diligence, facilitate monetization and improve the quality of patents. Phelps will lead AOP as it embarks on its expanding opportunities and growth.

Best known for his work restructuring intellectual property management at IBM and Microsoft, Phelps has dedicated his career to helping both businesses and governments to improve patent quality. His book, "Burning the Ships: Transforming Your Company's Culture Through Intellectual Property Strategy," has quickly evolved into an industry standard. Phelps earned his place at the forefront of the IP field by pioneering a number of distinctive patent management and monetization strategies; these tactics have helped him to energize the intellectual property spectrum not only at Microsoft and IBM but across the entire patent landscape.

About Article One Partners
Article One Partners (AOP) is the world's largest patent research community. The company posts crowdsourced requests for patent research to its global community in exchange for premium compensation. AOP clients include 18 of the top 25 companies most frequently targeted by non-practicing entities, 57 Forbes Global 2000, 14 Fortune 100 companies, 7 of the top 10 U.S. patent filers and premier international law firms.