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February 26, 2001 | By Darcy Evon
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CHICAGO—Do you remember IBM's Patent Server site on the Internet? It was one of the
most widely used resources to research and evaluate patents in the U.S.
The unit was so successful, in fact, that IBM spun out the unit last year,
now called Delphion. The Lisle-based firm has expanded its helpful tools
and products to become the leading resource for intellectual asset management
and may become a prime instigator of expanded technology commercialization
efforts as a result.
Delphion unveiled its new website and named its senior management team this week. The unit became independent when Internet Capital Group invested $35 million for a 40 percent stake in the venture last year, according to president and CEO Woody Ritchey. "IBM contributed the patent server platform to Delphion and ICG gave us the cash," he said. The site attracts roughly 150,000 unique users a week and that number is expected to grow with the newly-announced enhancements.
Delphion's new management team includes executives from Platinum and IBM. In explaining how the high-visibility startup landed its headquarters in the Chicago area, Ritchey said that there "was a pocket of IBM executives in the Naperville area who worked on the patent server." He added that Delphion employs 25 in Chicago and about 30 in its San Jose office.
The new site offers new features such as licensing information including contacts with the inventor or representative; alternate use specifications of the technology (very important for potential markets); expanded data to include foreign patent collections; and Derwent data abstracts to help with understanding markets for commercialization.
"We offer the buy versus build proposition to entrepreneurs," said Ritchey, "We expect that the site will have a positive impact on the rate of commercialization of technology. Delphion is different from sites like www.Yet2.com, which is much less comprehensive in its listings and is geared toward the licensing of specific technologies for a fee.
Delphion does not charge a transaction fee on licenses but rather generates revenues from listing fees, transaction fees on downloads of patent information, and fee-based analytic tools.
©2001 i-street. Used with permission from i-street.
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