Patent Monkey Joins Deadpool, Only To Rise Again as Patents.com
Blake Robinson
17 comments »
Someone just shot the monkey. Patent Monkey, a Web-based patent database, is closing up shop and selling its assets to domain-name holding company Internet Real Estate Group (IREG) and Monster Venture Partners (MVP). (Disclosure: Patent Monkey is a CrunchGear affiliate). The Patent Monkey search and index capabilities will serve as the back-end technology for Patents.com, which IRG recently acquired for an undisclosed sum speculated to be over $1 million. Patent Monkey co-founder Paul Ratcliffe will make the transition to Patents.com as CEO, while co-founder Cory Sorice has moved on to Black & Decker as Director of Business Development. Patent Monkey now joins the deadpool.
But it shall rise again as Patents.com, which is slated to launch in the next few weeks, coinciding closely with a series A venture round that Monster says should close within the next 30 days. Patents.com plans to serve both the mainstream market and lawyers, but given Patent Monkey’s inability to reach profitability in this space, it remains debatable whether or not the new entity, with more overhead, will have any more luck. On the other hand, Free Patents Online currently sits in the Alexa top 3,000 and does business solely through ads, suggesting that Patents.com has the potential to turn a profit through targeted ad sales alone.
More interesting, however, is Patents.com’s potential to broach the more professional realm of Internet IP, a field currently dominated by Delphion . Due in part to its ad-supported initiative, it can forgo the $100 - $250 monthly fee that Delphion charges—a move that could help it to gain traction more quickly. The goal then is to create an international patent licensing network wherein patent owners can claim their patents and provide contact information. Patents.com could then serve as a sort of patents brokerage, providing a communications conduit between patent owners and patent searchers who may wish to license them, which is not insignificant. According to McKinsey Quarterly (PDF file) , the licensing of U.S. patents alone grosses $100 billion annually, indicating that a channel for effectively communicating with patent holders could be monetized handsomely.
Monster Venture Partners founder Rob Monster will serve as chairman for the newly structured entity. Through Monster’s involvement, the new Patents.com will be translated into 15 languages using Worldlingo, a company in which Monster sits on the board.
While Patents.com will launch serving only U.S. patents, it has ambitions to soon index documents from the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO). Stephen Pinkos, a former Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, will serve as Patents.com’s Executive Vice President. It also probably won’t hurt that Monster’s Worldlingo currently holds the translation contract for the EPO (a task that it claims to complete with 95% accuracy). Patents.com will be worth watching to see how a domainer firm can do transitioning from a holding company to an operating company.
http://www.google.com/patents
Isn’t this idea obsolete though?
This would be like somebody ressurecting kiko.com now after they were destroyed by Google?
http://www.sparkip.com which recently launched seems to be going in the same patent/technology licensing direction, billing itself as an intellectual property exchange. It has a pretty interesting clustering systems for displaying related patents and so on. I wrote a short blurb on it at:
http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blog.....hange.html
Dropping the cutesy cartoon characters is always a good idea!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Chris: Everyone wants to grab a piece of the pie.
never heard of them, but good riddance to the mountain dew font. what company that isn’t producing a citrus “EXTREME” soda would use that for a logo?
Interesting. We have a similar site, IdeaTango.com, a social networking site for inventors and the product development community. However we focus on all the stages of product development, from patents to prototypes to marketing. Often we find independent inventors so concerned with patents, that they forget to test if their product will actually sell. According to an MIT study 97% of patents never become commercially viable. Actually the chances of a startup company making it are about 5 times better than an inventor making it.
Kinda sucks, but that’s why we’re trying to help. And we charge $50 - A YEAR - to inventors, comparable to inventor association dues. We’ve also partnered up with millionaire inventor Lisa Lloyd, and she’s helping us develop tools and resources that can further help inventors. Also, we’re giving FREE memberships to bloggers, so contact us (via the web site) if you’d like a membership. Thanks, Bryan President & Founder
I hope they don’t only focus on patent search because not only is there freepatentsonline but Google has a great patent search at google.com/patents that (atleast while I worked at the PTO) all the Patent Examiners used…
I don’t understand why they did things this way, why not just forward all traffic from patent mokey domain to the new one after the site is done to minimize traffic loss. Now they are starting from scratch again with search engines.
Jon
Google Patents kind of makes this obsolete?
Hi,
I think there are a lot of patent search engines, and with all due respect to Google, Google Patents doesn’t make the cut.
Since patents are highly technical and the least concern of most people, patent databases and search engines, like Delphion, MicroPatent, and others, still remain paid, secure, and lesser known (basically more business like).
Comparing them with Google Patents is like comparing Photoshop with Paint.NET. Its good but not for professional use.
I would like to highlight some shortcomings of Google Patent Search below -
1. Limited database coverage - No EP or PCT documents
2. No ability to export search results - Try combining it with Google Docs and do some statistical anaylsis.
3. Limited Advanced Search option - Use of proximity operators, date ranges, etc.
I find the thought that people at the USTPO would use google to search patents hysterical. Because .. I’m sure when you have *ALL* the data, and the east-west search engine at your disposal - the FIRST inclination you would have is to go to an outside source that is not only incomplete, but has roughly a 30% accuracy return. Right.
PatentMonkey was reviewed against FPO, Google, and a few other companies (I think on patentbaristas) and found to be close to if not more accurate than FPO. In fact, in my use of both sites (which I would consider to be the two forerunners in the space) FPO has been playing ‘catch-up’ to patent monkey’s features for the last six months. [I still don't see anyone else, even the uspto, that lets you search excluding expired or abandoned patents .. try doing an infringement search without THAT little gem once your used to it.]
Its a shame they could not make it on their own, but good to see that someone thought them valuable enough to buy, then get more VC funding for.
Hello all,
I wanted to take a moment to discuss the vision of Patents.com and some of the comments.
First and foremost, our vision is global. We are building a worldwide patent database and translating our database into the 15 most common languages enabling the vast majority of people the ability to search and review worldwide patent documents in their native language.
However, global data is only a portion of our vision. We are also using this global search platform to bring together the global community of inventors, scientists, owners, professionals, buyers, and other constituents to facilitate connections, licensing, and other transactions.
As Goyal pointed out quite well, Google Patents has limited data (approximately 7 million US only issued patents) and limited search functionality.
What we are building will have over 450 million documents. Further, our data is structured and our system will provide all the advanced features that professionals in the patent community need (without the heavy fee) as well as easy to understand interfaces to enable the average user to benefit from Patents.com (www.patents.com).
As for PatentMonkey, the site will remain up until Patents.com is ready and will then redirect traffic. However, everybody on our team views the opportunity to roll up patentmonkey into a bigger plan, with experienced and successful entrepreneurs, under the best domain for the space a clear success.
Regards,
Paul Ratcliffe
CEO - Patents.com
This is Rob Monster, Chairman of Patents.com.
Patents.com is far more than a restart of Patent Monkey. In the span of just 7 weeks, we completed the acquisition of Patent Monkey, we have also mapped a global vision for the company, recruited the former #2 at the US PTO, partnered with Worldlingo and have engaged high-level dialog with a number of other high impact partners. There is no doubt in my mind that Patent Monkey was a diamond in the rough and the foundation of something significant.
In terms of the team, Paul Ratcliffe (CEO), Steve Walk (CTO) and Steve Pinkos (EVP Corp Dev) are the core of an A-team. I will put Paul’s operating skills up against any other startup exec in the Patent/IP world. Steve Walk had as much technology in the back-room waiting for launch as he had live on the PatentMonkey site. Steve Pinkos brings a deep global network and an external focus which will figure prominently in engaging the patent community.
Another unsung hero in the Patents.com ecosystem is Lars George, CTO of Worldlingo. I have seen the Google Analytics reports with my own eyes. He is serving up translations to 13 million monthly unique users. His highly-tuned platform is doing this with some 90 low-end Linux servers, and with capacity to spare. When combined with category glossaries, the translation accuracy is unparalleled. (Disclaimer: I was an early investor in Lernout & Hauspie back in the late 80’s).
Interestingly, there are some parallels here with other investments that I have backed recently. Demoxi (http://www.demoxi.com) was formed via the acquisition of assets from two prior companies, Dategrity and VoteHere, which had collectively spent $20 million over 11 years. When we first announced the deal, the blogger community was skeptical. When Demoxi launches public beta on November 7, I believe you will find Jim Adler to have been substantially vindicated. Jim and his team has built a very cool product, this time focused on the very real problem of how do you create an internet experience that is simultaneously PERSONAL but also PRIVATE.
I look forward to partnering with the Patents.com leadership team.
I would enjoy speaking to people about the IP space. I have met a few entrepreneurs in this space and know the larger companies. Feel free to ping me first at blog emailaddy.