This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, we enter the world of patent monetization and patent dealmaking. Our conversation is about patent licensing, dealmaking and patent deal volume today. We also discuss the impact the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) continues to have over the industry, and the influence the PTAB has even still on patent monetization, as well as patent enforcement generally.
As you hear the conversation unfold we discuss that reality that patent deals are getting done. Although the value of the patent deals currently being consummated has not increased in 2025 compared with the last several years, the number of patent deals being done has dramatically increased, which could be the first sign of a bounce in the patent marketplace on the horizon.
Joining me this week is Russell Binns, who I’ve known for more than 30 years. Russ and I went to law school together he is currently the CEO at Allied Security Trust, which is a member driven cooperative that acquires patents and then licenses its members for the purpose of patent risk mitigation. I am also joined by Bill Geary, the long time Vice-President of MPEG-LA, which licenses patents covering various standard essential technology. Today Bill is Chief Strategy Officer at IDEAHUB, where he is responsible for creating and launching new patent pools for worldwide nonexclusive licensing. And last but certainly not least, we are joined by Jonathan Rogers, who is Chief Operating Officer for Centripetal, an innovative cybersecurity leader that has won several billion-dollar-plus verdicts for patent infringement, which are still working their way through the court system.
Leading off our conversation, Binns explains that patent monetization is a tough business:
“The market is very robust. There are a lot of patent transactions going on. We’ve been monitoring the market for 18 years now at AST, we have a software platform that’s kind of like the MLS listings for patents that are available for sale or license. So, we’ve got a lot of rich data and history there. But it’s a very robust market. At the same time, monetization of patents is hard. It just, it kind of sucks. I mean, it’s this crapshoot between, you can do everything right, and there’s still no guarantees. I mean, you have the litigation landscape is a crapshoot, but you need quality patents, but quality patents are not enough. You need EOUs. They’re essential if you want to have a deal, but they don’t guarantee anything either. And then you have to be reasonable, and reasonable’s got a different definition to everybody. So, it’s a really hard market, especially if you want lots of money.”
Binns goes on to say: “We’ve already done a whole year’s worth of deal volume in 2025 than we did in all of 2024, basically, in the first six months. So the deal volume is incredible. But they are lower priced deals.”
Geary agreed: “We are seeing a larger volume of deals or at least of offerings from different brokers, from well-established brokers and also some newer players in the field, say out of China or Taiwan or even Singapore… And we’re also seeing more, say, strategic licensing deals where companies are having conflicts with other companies. And it’s worthwhile for them to offload a set of patents to a third party to kind of fight the fight for them or help them come to a conclusion in terms of a license or a license renewal.”
Meanwhile, given that Centripetal has faced massive infringement by several of the largest companies in the world and continues to fight a war of attrition in the $1.5 trillion dollar cybersecurity market, Rogers is understandably more skeptical but hopeful. “It seems to me that IP as an asset class is historically beat down… I’m hopeful that the outlook now is that we are possibly about to enter an upswing where there can be predictability and pathways to quiet title, where this asset class can actually be better monetized than it has been.”
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