## The IP-Alignment-Project
In an ideal world, patents and products fully align, that is, the products offered by any given company are covered by its own patents and all such patents are valid and the products do not infringe on any other company's patents. In lieu of such perfect alignment, we can at least greatly improve it by having patents shared across multiple companies, via licensing, in order to mitigate litigation. The time is finally here where we can reliably apply AI to IP to help us with this alignment process, at scale. The IP-Alignment-Project is dedicated to this alignment process by creating/managing effective and innovative patent pools.
## Patent Pool
The IP-Alignment-Project creates and maintains inexpensive patent pools. Each patent pool is composed of:
- a founding document(s), which is a *tech-standard*, such as an RFC
- a set of *candidate* claim charts
- a set of *active* claim charts (subset of the above)
## Selection of claim charts for the pool
The set of active claim charts referred to above is created via the following sequence of steps:
1. <u>AI is used</u> to discover candidate patents, each of which is reading on the *tech-standard* that is chosen as the founding document for the pool.
2. For each of these candidate patents, <u>AI is used</u> to generate a *tech-standard* claim chart. The new candidate patents are the ones of the very highest quality.
3. For each of these candidate patents, <u>AI is used</u> to discover candidate *products*, each of which is being read on by a candidate patent, thereby forming multiple patent/product pairs (each patent potentially has multiple products that it is reading on).
4. For each of these candidate patent/product pairs, <u>AI is used</u> to generate a *product* claim chart. The new candidate claim charts are the ones of the very highest quality, that is, one where the product is potentially infringing on some other company's patent. These are the final *candidate* claim charts for the pool, at least until new patents are issued and more are potentially discovered.
5. Finally, when such a claim chart's associated patent owner becomes a member AND the associated product owner becomes a member, the claim chart becomes active. So, the patent pool is defined by the set of such *active* product claim charts at any given time.
As you may have noticed, this methodology of creating a patent pool has not been used in the past because real AI has not been available or reliable. Now that 1000's of claim charts can be tirelessly generated and filtered, many high quality pools can suddenly be materialized.
## Your Patents and Products
If one of your patents or products is involved in a *candidate* claim chart, you can become a **member** of the pool, thereby making all such applicable claim charts *active* and the pool would be expanded (given that it is active on the other side too). For each claim chart on one of your patents, your share of the pool increases accordingly (you have the role of a traditional *licensor*). For example, if you have 5 claim charts (perhaps involving 3 of your patents) and there are 500 claim charts in the pool, your **share** of a disbursement is 1%. If you have products involved in some other claim charts (you have the role of a traditional *licensee*), then you pay into the pool for each one of those claim charts, at a rate that is set for the particular pool. (See down below for a calculation.) Of course, a given member can have either or both roles of *licensor* and *licensee*.
## Benefits
- Your products are protected against *all* of the patents in the pool, not just the patents that are associated with your products in claim charts.
- The pools serves as a unified front against an external challenger of any patent or product in the pool.
- In the event that some patent external to the pool is asserted on some product in the pool, a defense can be auto-generated via IP-Profile at no cost to the member.
- You have a new stream of revenue for your patents.
- You save on the expenses and time you would have had to endure to have claim charts created for your patents and/or your products.
- You can have peace of mind that the pool is managed in an automated fashion and is not prone to human inconsistencies in judgement. Of course, there is still some oversight by humans.
- Via useful reports, there is full transparency on members, patents and products, disbursements, fees, claim charts, etc.
- You can market that you are a reasonable participant in the ever-evolving IP ecosystem.
## Access
- By becoming a member of a pool, you gain full access to the content of the claim charts in the pool, whether they are active or not.
- If you're a non-member with claim charts (inactive, still just candidates) in a pool, you get free access to the claim charts that map your patents to the tech-standard. And in that case, you may purchase the claim charts for your patents and products at a very reasonable price from the IP-Alignment-Project.
## Example of a patent pool
The patent pool **RFC 9000** has the following:
- 250 active claim charts (out of 300 candidate claim charts). 250 = 70 + 140 + 40 (see below).
- 40 members activate their patents in 70 claim charts ⇒ Each such member receives disbursements from the pool
- 100 members activate their products in 140 claim charts ⇒ Each such member provides revenue for the pool
- 20 members activate their patents *and* products in 40 claim charts ⇒ Each such member receives a disbursement where there are more claim charts involving their patents than claim charts involving their products. Otherwise, such a member provides revenue for the pool.
## Revenue and Disbursement
- The calculation below can be run on a periodic basis, such as monthly or quarterly.
- Fee per claim chart (paid by a product owner) = $1K
- Fee for creating/maintaining the pool = $10K + 1% of Revenue
- Claim charts in the pool = 250
- Revenue = $1K x 250 = $250K
- Total disbursement to members = Revenue - Fee = $250K - $10K - (1% of $250K) = $237,500
- Claim charts for *your* 4 patents = 10
- Disbursement to you for your 10 claim charts = Your share x Total disbursement = 10/250 x $237,500K = $9,500
## To Be Clear
- A candidate claim chart becomes *active* in the pool when BOTH the owner of the patent and the owner of the product activate their side of the claim chart.
- To become a member, it is the expectation that you activate your side of all applicable patents and products in the pool. There may have to be some nuanced exceptions to this; we shall see.
- At this time, all patents in the pool are US Patent Grants. This will be expanded in the near future.
- At this time, a claim chart consists of the first independent claim. This will be expanded to include all independent claims in the near future.
## AI
IP-Profile.com is the tech used to discover patents and products and to generate claim charts. IP-Profile is relied upon by companies such as Allied Security Trust and Dolby/Via-LA.
It should be noted that the IP will not be perfectly aligned by the AI just yet (neither are pools run by humans), but you can be absolutely certain that it will only get better and better over time.
- RFC 9000 QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed and Secure Transport
- ICH Q8(R2): Pharmaceutical Development
- *Many more are on the way, with each of them minimizing any overlap with any other pool.*
- Join the The IP-Alignment-Project and become part of this innovative initiative.
- Email us at: info@ip-alignment-project.org
- We can prepare a report for you that shows what patent pools you can become a member of.