History of IPB

In the mid-nineties, a small team of product development specialists of the treasury department of a German bank identified "knowledge" as: the follow-up investment target beside the internet. Today, the internet provides just about any information to masses in the world. Due to this fact, information is losing its value. What is valuable today is the information's abstract: Knowledge.

Through patenting information relevant to inventions that meet the requirements of patent law, the key requirement for commercialising knowledge is created as a patent enables property-like rights over the knowledge concerning that invention. The idea was born to set up an investment trust only investing in companies which own underestimated patent-portfolios. Therefore, there was a need to find a method of valuating patents fast, reliably and competitively priced.

Nearly at the same time, the bank was liquidating a customer's collateral which was machinery. Unfortunately, the machinery was protected by several patents, which did not belong to the enterprise but to its former owner. Needless to say, the former owner was quite happy when the bank sold the machinery because on the same day he received a licensee that gave him a new income stream.

These two circumstances led to great success of IPB's in 2001.

In cooperation with seven German universities and a growing number of IP-specialists, IPB developed a new valuation-method for patents that was certified, in February 2004 on customers' request, by a firm of chartered accountants, namely, KPMG. Since then it has been possible to use patent-portfolios as collaterals. Especially SMEs can benefit from the alternative financing option which help to enlarge the company's equity base. In most cases, banks offer similar conditions using classical collaterals, such as real estate.