Obtaining a Technological Advantage

Craig Zolan, co-founder of the intellectual property exchange site UVentures.com, claims that sites like his provide a service that could revolutionize the ISP industry by providing easy access to new technology.

[January 12, 2001]

by Craig Zolan

Craig Zolan is President and CEO of UVentures, Inc. UVentures.com is an online intellectual property exchange for technology buyers and sellers. The site was launched in October 1999 by New York-based UVentures, Inc., founded by Craig Zolan, a former Internet and new media attorney, and David Batten, a former investment banker and an active angel investor.

Challenges faced by today's Internet service providers include the market's demand for faster, higher quality and value-added Internet services. ISPs must continually explore new technological innovations in order to 1) maintain their network's capacity, performance and reliability to keep up with explosive bandwidth demands, and 2) differentiate themselves with unique and better services to attract new customers and compete as leaders in the marketplace.

Staying on the cutting edge of technology can be costly. R&D expenses continue to rise and there is enormous expense in bringing a product to market. Online intellectual property (IP) exchanges allow ISPs access to hundreds of technologies that have years of research and development time and, in many cases, are ready to license.

Locating intellectual property has traditionally been a time-consuming and fragmented endeavor, usually relying on personal networking and inquiries to research labs. Until recently, the only central storehouse for intellectual property was the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where buyers faced mounds of data and an exhausting search process. Last year alone 160,000 patents were issued—an average of 18 an hour.

Online IP exchanges, which list new ideas and innovations across all types of industries, act essentially as marketplace matchmakers by bringing technology buyers and sellers together, resulting in potentially valuable products being brought to the market that might have otherwise been left to collect dust.

Examples
For ISPs, technologies such as optoelectronics, broadband, database, IP networking, VoIP, streaming video and audio, and other technologies are all areas where licensable property exists in online marketplaces. Here are just three examples:

1. A technology has recently been developed in a university lab that is a streaming-video-via-wireless-technology for ISPs. The property is a patent-pending algorithm that optimizes the wireless transmission of downloadable and real-time streaming video.
   
   
2. A host server technology has been developed that allows easier access to VoIP networks and enhanced services gateways automatically without the need for any wiring changes, Internet access, or a PC. A device, which plugs into any phone jack just like a telephone, processes the digits as they are being dialed.
   
   For local calls, the device simply passes through the number that the user dialed as it is being dialed. For intrastate toll, interstate, and international calls, the device can automatically connect to the closest VoIP gateway. This technology can enable providers to offer telephony services to the mass consumer and small business markets and become their default carrier for all toll calls, without the need for costly Feature Group D access, directly from an ITSP's existing VoIP gateway.
   
   The technology has numerous proprietary and patented capabilities not found in previous generations of network access technologies.
   
   
3. Researchers have developed an adaptive pre-fetch scheme that may be applied to almost any network application in which files on a remote server may be needed and for which it is possible to estimate the probability of accessing the files. The most obvious example is web browsing.
   
   This prefetch scheme has two main components: 1) an adaptive prefetch algorithm, which can be used to obtain files on remote servers before a user requests them, so that the average delay of accessing these files is reduced, and 2) a Graphic User Interface (GUI) which adds icons to each web link on a page to indicate the quality and condition of the link.
   
   Competing prefetching schemes simply prefetch a fixed number of pages or pages above a fixed threshold value. These are not adaptive to network conditions, so there is often no real improvement on system performance.
   
   This new adaptive prefetch scheme predicts how likely it is that a user will request files based on access history. It determines not only which pages are requested, but also from which page the request is initiated. It also assesses the quality of the link based on the network capacity, system load, and takes into account the cost of bandwidth and usage time. This prefetch scheme can be incorporated into a web browser, and the techniques may be applied in other caching applications as well.

Licensing challenges
Like any shopping trip, you may have to try a few on for size before you find the right fit because of the many variables that can be expected when licensing a new invention.

First, you will need to have a good understanding of the market opportunities. Conduct a market analysis to make sure the property is a good fit with your current Internet products and services as well as long term business goals.

Once you find a good technology with the best potential, you will need to perform a thorough investigation and scrutiny of the technology, including its capability promises, its patent, the regulatory issues, the potential profit compared with the cost to bring it to market and its delivery timetable.

Finally, when you get to the negotiating and licensing phase, you will need to consider license fees, milestone payments, royalty fees, contracts and other legal issues that will require professional legal help.

Conclusion
New opportunities and competitive advantages await ISPs seeking cutting-edge innovations. The thousands of licensable technologies from a wide variety of industries listed on IP exchanges are an opportunity that ISPs can explore. Your business may discover new and unexpected eBusiness solutions.

—End

 

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