How Patent Vulnerability Impacts Valuation

David Wanetick

Measuring even a well-delineated entity is much more difficult than may be imagined. As mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot has discussed, no one can really say how long the coastline of Great Britain is. The tides vary the coastline depending on the hour of measurement, while the cumulative effect of choosing how precisely to measure the length has a dramatic impact on the final assessment. Patent valuation is even more difficult to determine than geographical features, due to the interminable variation of underlying technologies, legal issues, business issues, and the context in which patent valuations are conducted.