Startup Blurbs

If you have ever filed a patent, you will know that after writing it up in your engineering notebook one of the next steps is to do some preliminary research on prior art. The problem is that searching for prior art is not exactly the easiest thing in the world. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) provides a very up to date database of patents and disclosures but the search functionality and presentation is mediocre at best. Google has also ventured into the patent search field and scientific publications with Google Patent Search and Google Scholar. Both tools are pretty good, for example, Google Patent Search, unlike the USPTO, allows one to view all the related images without the need of a plugin. Additionally, the full patent document can be downloaded as a PDF for future reference. On the downside, on occasion I have found it to be a bit out of sync with the USPTO and also not listing all the related citations. Further, I would also be concerned about whether Google stores the search terms and if they might get published.

Google though, is not alone in the intellectual property search and exchange game. Today, SparkIP launched SparkIP.com, which is billed as an intellectual property exchange for the scientific community. Ed Trimble, the Chief Executive Officer of SparkIP, will be familiar to many since prior to SparkIP he was the CEO and founder of EzGov Inc., before it was acquired by ChoicePoint. In essence, SparkIP intends to bring universities, innovators, corporations, attorneys, and researchers together and make the research on emerging technologies as well as the brokerage of IP easier. For now, the SparkIP database contains over 3.5 million US patents, with plans to add patent applications and international patents in the upcoming weeks. They are also seeking to partner with universities and labs from around the world and make their technology listings available on the site.

What is unique to SparkIP, as opposed to the other sites mentioned before, is their concept of SparkCluster maps. Basically, any search on the site will return a list of SparkClusters, each of which is a map of contextually related items which are arranged in clusters. Each cluster is represented as a node which is connected to other related nodes via edges. The size of the nodes represents the number of items that are contained in that cluster. Clicking on a node brings up another screen that shows filtered items based on the query. One also receives additional options such as that ability to filter by assignee name and date range.  The visual presentation is very appealing and the navigation is quite intuitive, except for the required double-click in the SparkCluster view. On the other hand, either the database might still be incomplete or the search functionality might need some improvements, since queries for recent patents that yielded results on other sites yielded none here. Overall though I think that this clustered approach and visualization has great potential in terms of IP search, and the dreaded search for prior art might become a lot less time consuming soon.

There are many great ideas out there, but few ever make it from the concept phase into an actual product, and even fewer end up as profitable business ventures. Money, while not the magical pill as was proven by countless .com companies towards the end of the nineties, can however go a long way of at least helping you get out of the starting block. But with so many ideas, and just as many failures, it is not surprising that venture capitalists are very selective about where they choose to invest their assets. Any tips that might help score that money are therefore much appreciated. Conveniently, CNNMoney just published a short article titled 5 Tips to Score Venture Capital Funding, in which venture capital representatives from Safeguard Scientific, Beringea, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, and Kodiak Venture Partners comment on what they like to see in a startup. According to the VCs the people that are behind the business plan are more important than the plan that got them in the door in the first place, since the plan is likely to change over time and it will be up to them to make sure that it does as market conditions change. Thus, the things they look for are: passion, focus, the team that has been assembled to take on the challenge at hand, uniqueness of the approach or in other words innovations, and finally a potential product that will make enough money to make it a worthwhile investment. Generally, pretty logical things and what one would expect VCs to say, the only point that I would elaborate on is the innovation part and that statement that the product needs to be different as opposed to more and better. There has to be some innovation for sure, but what needs to be kept in mind that the innovation does not need to necessarily come on the product itself, but can be on the process for creating a similar product. The market place is littered with examples where the first company to deliver a new and unique product eventually fell by the wayside after being outdone by someone who had a better process of creating a very similar clone.

The intervals at which EETimes.com updates their emerging startup list is very inconsistent, and so it comes that just three months after publishing their 6.0 list, which we analyzed here, they’ve published an updated 6.1 version. There really is not that much new on this updated list. Two companies have left the list, namely Tarari and Clear Shape Technologies. The former has been acquired by the LSI Corporation and the latter has been acquired by Cadence Design Systems. The respective press release for the acquisitions can be found here and here. Newcomers to the 6.1 list include Kenet Inc., Perpetuum Ltd., and Phiar Corporation. Kenet Inc is a fabless semiconductor company that specializes in mixed-signal solutions for portable electronics. It was founded to commercialize the FemtoCharge technology that was developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Perpetuum is a startup that focuses on vibration energy-harvesting, enabling wireless and battery-free sensors. Finally, Phiar is developing nano-scale stacks of metal and insulators that enable devices that can operate at terahertz frequencies.