Cubicibuc Limited
Cubicibuc is an independent technical consulting firm specializing in matters relating to Intellectual Property. We are dedicated to providing pragmatic commercial and technical advice to clients ranging from smaller start-ups to mature multinationals; from early stage invention capture through to exploitation and monetisation of IP assets.
Good IP management protects competitive advantage; generates returns on R&D and secures finance.
We provide expert IP support: IP strategy development; health check and audit; tech transfer and M&A due diligence; and expert witness support over a range of technologies and sectors.
Good IP management allows business to protect its competitive advantage; to generate returns on R&D investment and to secure investment and finance. Modern businesses neglect their IP assets at their risk as poor IP management gives away value and reduces barriers to entry for competitors compromising the organisation's capabilities. To manage IP well business must adopt a combination of commercial, legal and technical expertise.
Cubicibuc supports its clients by:
- providing confidential and independent IP strategy advice
- performing IP audits, health checks
- supporting commercial negotiation, tech transfer, licensing and litigations
Products and services
Technical Subject Matter Experts
Cubicibuc is a technical consulting firm specialising in intellectual property, with a core expertise in consumer electronics and telecommunications. We provide subject matter experts that have deep technical knowledge from specific industry experience and consulting skills necessary to engage with legal teams.
We work with client teams supporting contentious actions such as litigation and licensing. Our subject matter experts have worked with clients submitting patents to patent pools; organisations looking to sell patents requiring evidence of use; and organisations looking to prove infringement in support of legal actions.
The need for Subject Matter Experts
Automated IP analytic systems are not yet able to perform the deep technical analysis required to produce high quality technical analysis such as standards mappings, evidence of infringement and evidence of use. The approach of mapping patents to products, services or standards requires a detailed understanding of the patents claim language as well as the technology underlying the product.
Our experience shows that there are far too many weak mappings presented in the IP market place. Patents with little or no evidence of actual usage undermines patent transactions, and associated valuations.
Often poor analysis stretches patent claims well beyond their language wasting time and effort in downstream review by multiple parties. Poor infringement analysis also adds unnecessary pressure from spurious claims for licensing, or threats of litigation.
Subject matter experts with hands-on experience of commercial implementations are essential to ensure patent analysis provides outputs fit-for-purpose.
We believe good IP management allows business to protect its competitive advantage; to generate returns on R&D investment and to secure investment and finance.
To manage IP well business must adopt a combination of commercial, legal and technical expertise from subject matter experts.
Cubicibuc supports its clients by:
- providing confidential and independent technical services to evaluate IP assets
- performing IP audits, patent mining and landscaping exercises
- developing IP strategies to support commercial negotiation, licensing and litigations
- providing independent technical expert reports
We work with businesses ranging from smaller start-ups to mature multinationals; from early stage invention capture through to exploitation and monetisation of IP assets.
To discuss how Cubicibuc’s expertise can help your organisation manage and exploit IP, please contact us at info@cubicibuc.com
Managing Business Secrets
Management of business secrets, whether formal trade secrets, confidential information or data requires a pragmatic approach, with a people-centric focus on strategic management across the organisation.
UK Trade Secret Regulations 2018 (Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/597/made) adopt the Directive (EU) 2016/943 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2016 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets)
The regulations define (section 2): “trade secret” means information which:
- is secret in the sense that it is not, as a body or in the precise configuration and assembly of its components, generally known among, or readily accessible to, persons within the circles that normally deal with the kind of information in question,
- has commercial value because it is secret, and
- has been subject to reasonable steps under the circumstances, by the person lawfully in control of the information, to keep it secret;
“trade secret holder” means any person lawfully controlling a trade secret.
Cubicibuc supports clients of all sizes in the identification and development of strategic plans for intellectual property. Our aim is to provide a link between the corporate goals and the operational function of IP.
For more information about how we can help, please get in touch.
Intellectual Property Strategy - Supporting SMEs and Start-ups with managing innovation
Intellectual Property (IP) is the most important assets that businesses have. IP codifies the expertise, skills and capability of a business; IP identifies the specific applications, technologies and products that the business creates. The ability to identify, manage and exploit IP is therefore a critical skill to acquire especially for technology-rich, product developers.
Strategy addresses questions such as:
- What is the relative potential of an organisation’s various business units and their relative potential as areas for future investment?
- How is the organisation to achieve necessary levels of economies of scale, or organisational learning, or technical innovation, sufficient to enable it to match or exceed the performance levels of rival organisations?
- Which of the organisation’s resources and capabilities are likely to need to change over time in line with changes in the marketplace or in technology?
- How are we to build and manage complex resource clusters?
- How do we monitor and revise our strategies so as to identify and respond to environmental turbulence?
- How do we determine the shape, size and purpose of our organisation over time? What changes in organisational structure and processes might be necessary?
- Which activities should our organisation continue to perform internally, and which should we rely on other organisations to contribute via outsourcing or co-operative alliances?
Operational thinking relates to those activities or sets of activities that characterise the internal functioning of an organisation on a day-to-day basis.
Strategic thinking, by contrast, considers the performance of such systems and activities in their entirety. It is a way of thinking that reflects on how all these activities connect and relate to each other in achieving the objectives or mission of the organisation. Strategic thinking asks not only how these activities work together, but also how they can be aligned, combined or performed differently to deliver a product or service of distinct value to the market.
Cubicibuc supports clients of all sizes in the identification and development of strategic plans for intellectual property. Our aim is to provide a link between the corporate goals and the operational function of IP.
Cubicibuc Limited
Intellectual Property (IP) is the most important assets that businesses have. IP codifies the expertise, skills and capability of a business; IP identifies the specific applications, technologies and products that the business creates. The ability to identify, manage and exploit IP is therefore a critical skill to acquire especially for technology-rich, product developers.
IP business analysis provides organisation vital intelligence to:
- Share knowledge internally and externally across department and disciplines. In turn this leads to greater productivity, greater innovation and increased motivation
- Maximise the value of your investment in R&D and your IP assets. Make strategic decisions about which Intellectual Assets to protect, which to share and which to avoid
- Manage external relationships and contracts with more confidence. A knowledge of your IP provides leverage when negotiating contracts; a knowledge of your competitors’ IP gives you competitive business intelligence that informs business strategy
- Generate revenue by exploiting the value held in your IP through licensing or sale.
Most consumer and FMCG products are so complex that identifying related patents and the associated patent owners is a significant problem, and one that is often overlooked. Yet weak IP management risks the ability of business to maintain its competitive advantage or worse still exposes the business to licensing costs and potential litigation.
When companies launch new products the increased profile inevitably brings increased interest from third parties that hold IP, which may be, or may be claimed to be, relevant to the products. The perceived risks of intellectual property infringement, including potential injunctions from competitors can have a negative effect on stakeholder decisions: including customers, suppliers and investors.
Having an understanding of the competitive positions, potential responses and armory at your disposal helps prepare for potential conflict and reduce the delay to respond.
Understanding the IP landscape relating to your technology and products, and those of your competitors allows you to:
- Identify the ownership of relevant patents and IP
- Develop benchmark royalty rates
- Identify potential risk and create mitigating action plans
- Prepare for licensing negotiation on an equal footing with potential licensors.
A key element of the business case for wireless enabled products is the licensing cost for Standards Essential IP, and whether indemnifications are provided by suppliers. While it is commonplace for manufacturers to commence production without all licences in place, it is also prudent to make provisions for future licence demands. As consumer electronics products become commoditised the available margin and sensitivity to such licensing provisions is increasingly important.
The activities of Non-Practicing Entities only complicates the picture as NPEs are often immune to counter cross-licensing negotiations. NPE also reduce ownership transparency and dissipate the patent landscape making royalty rate benchmarking difficult.
There are many steps to understanding your position in licensing and royalty calculations, but you need to consider:
- Patent mappings to features used or embedded in the product
- Patent map to features of a technical standard used by the product (potentially SEPs)
- How the patent relates to the wider patent landscape associated with the technology – and hence the relative size of the patent portfolio to the entire patent landscape.
While it is common to hear that a large part of an organization’s value is associated with its IP, it is uncommon to see much effort spent on actually reviewing that IP during M&A activities. Typical commercial contracts rely on post-transaction remedies in the form of reps and warranties, rather than taking the time to review the package of IP (patents, know-how, design documents, manufacturing instructions etc) ahead of the transaction itself.
In the absence of a pragmatic, technically driven IP due diligence process, any gaps in the IP transfer process typically lead to costly project recovery exercises which add costs to the process and delay any potential integration.
When looking at acquiring IP from any source organizations must be sure that all necessary and sufficient elements are present - that the kit of parts and instructions for use have been reviewed and independently verified.
IP Assurance, as it is sometimes known, allows both seller and buyer to benefit from the independent review. For the seller it ensures the right kits of parts is transfers - to reduce the risk of future claims - but only the necessary IP, nothing more. A seller may also be able to demonstrate the value of the IP when it is packages well.
For the buyer the risk of acquiring IP with missing components is reduced, hence allowing the buyers ability to integrate the solutions more quickly. The buyer also has the comfort that the IP has been independently verified.
