Defense & Enforcement
Patent Litigation
Patent litigation is complex and risky. It demands high quality and experienced counsel. Typically, that translates into premium rates at large law firms. But patent litigation is also rampant. Sound budget and billing practices, while critical, are therefore not enough. Clients need premium counsel with cost-effective rates. Averis offers both. With over a decade of experience litigating at a premier IP firm, Averis counsel offers the same expertise as larger firms but at significantly lower rates.
Each case is different. Competitor cases demand large teams and large budgets. NPE cases demand experienced counsel but tight budgets. In either case, Averis offers cost-effective solutions to shrink the budget, and provide the best value for each dollar spent on legal fees.
Competitor Cases
Clients are increasingly exercising their freedom of choice to engage different firms and attorneys for different tasks in a litigation. In large competitor cases, clients can add Averis to their outside counsel of choice to handle discrete tasks at half the rates of the trial team. These include:
- Initial Patent Analysis
- Claim Construction
- Finding Prior Art
- Invalidity Contentions
- Infringement Contentions
- Technical Depositions
- Expert Reports & Depositions
Trial counsel typically do not participate in many of these tasks. Averis counsel has extensive experience working seamlessly with diverse legal teams and trial counsel to ensure the right people have the right information at the right time. Having managed large teams of litigators in high-stakes cases, Averis counsel can provide clients with targeted and cost-effective solutions for key phases of the patent litigation lifecycle.
NPE Cases
NPE cases require a different strategy and timeline. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of an NPE case at the outset is critical for clients’ decision-making. This requires accelerated analysis of the patents, the accused products, and the prior art landscape. Frontloading those analytical tasks, however, becomes prohibitively expensive for clients should they use their traditional trial counsel of choice. Averis changes the calculus by providing clients with the counsel they need early, at rates that make sense in a cost-benefit analysis.
Portfolio Mining
Averis helps clients maintain a current understanding of the breadth, strengths, and weaknesses of their patent portfolios. Knowing what kind of leverage a company can bring to the table is critical to sound decision-making in the face of competitive threats. Averis offers in-depth claim-by-claim analyses of portfolios that can be mapped to a competitor’s product or service.
Outside the defense and enforcement context, a broad understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of a company’s portfolio helps to guide its strategic development and highlight technologies or applications for which additional protection should be sought. In the context of technology transactions, assessing the breadth and applicability of a target portfolio is fundamental in ultimately determining whether to invest. From a broad strategic understanding to a detailed claim-by-claim assessment, Averis offers clients a wide array of portfolio analysis services, including detailed SWOT studies.
Patent Opinions
These analyses require a thorough knowledge of the landscape of relevant patents and art, and a deep understanding of the breadth, strength, and enforceability of any patents that may relate to a client’s technology and products.
Infringement & Validity
When deciding how to respond to threats, infringement and validity opinions not only assists clients with the cost-benefit analysis, but can also support defenses to willful and indirect infringement allegations should litigation ensue. The analysis can also identify ways to design around patents if necessary or to further strengthen noninfringement defenses.
Patentability & Freedom to Operate
A reasoned opinion can be critical in determining the legal risks for a new product before a company makes substantial investments in its commercialization. Similarly, seeking a patentability opinion before making the financial investment in applying for a patent can ultimately reduce the cost of prosecution and strengthen the quality of the claims by focusing on the elements of the invention most likely to be patentable.
Technology Transactions
Due Diligence
Strategic and thorough analysis of a company’s patent portfolio is critical in mergers, acquisitions, and investments. Patents require the most intensive due diligence scrutiny of all intellectual property. While traditional due diligence covering title, validity, and enforceability is essential, understanding the true value of a patent portfolio requires analyzing its strength, breadth, and growth potential in the context of the acquiring company’s goals and the state of the industry to which the patents apply.
Averis assists venture capitalists, private equity firms, investment banks, and companies evaluate the value and risks of a patent portfolio through a structured diligence process, based on over a decade of evaluating, litigating, and licensing patents on behalf of technology powerhouses and industry leaders. By leveraging significant litigation and licensing experience in the due diligence process, Averis provides clients with an understanding of a portfolio’s practical defensive and offensive qualities in the industry beyond traditional, theoretical analysis. In addition to assessing patent portfolios from an intellectual property perspective, Averis can also assist in financial analyses of patent portfolios to determine potential acquisition or divestiture valuations.
Valuation
Purchasers and investors cannot make informed decisions without valuation. A reasonable valuation estimate can significantly improve all aspects of patent decision making. Its accuracy turns on its inputs, methodology, and interpretation. But uncertainties about the legal strength of a patent (validity, scope, and enforceability) or portfolio make the information gathering process more subjective for patents than other asset classes.
Averis helps venture capitalists, private equity firms, investment banks, and companies estimate the value of patents by improving the quality of the inputs to the valuation process, based on litigating and licensing both weak and strong patents on behalf of private institutions for the past decade.
Policy & Procedures
Averis helps technology institutions and companies develop IP policies and procedures. Whether public or private, small or large, a technology institution or company should have a clear framework in place that governs the development, ownership, and disposition of IP. Averis helps clients establish a framework and procedures for the development and equitable utilization of IP, and engage with their faculty or employees to ensure their understanding.
