Our friends at IP Law & Business recently posted about Ocean Tomo’s Spring Auction in San Francisco. Ocean Tomo has created the market for IP auctions, and their past success raised both eyebrows and new questions about how we value ideas. More so for me, I’ve always felt that this new market challenged the notion of whether IP required a context to hold value, or if value could simply be intrinsic. Why else trade ideas like commodities?
But Ocean Tomo’s 2009 Spring Auction was not like those that preceded it. According to reports, the auction took in less than 80% of the value of sold IP from last year’s auction. And out of 80 available lots, only six sold. I suppose everyone expected the results to be down in this economy. But I think the overwhelming failure of this auction leads me to make some interesting conclusions (these are just my thoughts):
- Much like the financial instruments that poisoned our economy, an auction of displaced ideas (or, good ideas looking for a good home) is really more about hype than it is about real value.
- IP value isn’t as intrinsic as we’ve been told. It’s exciting to entice individual inventors to sell their ideas devoid of a business model, but it’s really not that practical. When money was flowing, it seems companies bought IP at auction for the flare of it all. Now that we have to justify every penny, it seems that the risks aren’t worth it after all.
