1. Intellectueel eigendom groeit mee
dr. ir. Pybe Faber &
dr. ir. Rik Slingerland

2. Welcome to Thermo Fisher
May 27th 2016: announcement that FEI will be acquired by Thermo Fisher for 4.2 billion dollar ($ per share) in early 2017.
September 20th: takeover completed.
FEI no longer exists as a company, but remains as a brand name.
The legal entity FEI Company still exists and patents are still being filed under that name.
Thermo Fisher: 17.2 billion dollar revenue (before adding FEI), employees.
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7. Our Financials as of December 31, 2015
Orders & Net Sales
Net Sales by Geographic Region
*The European region also includes Central America, South America, Africa (excluding South Africa), the Middle East, and Russia.
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8. Our Customers Resolve Difficult Challenges
Semiconductors Shrinking component geometries and finding ways to increase yield, reduce cost, and accelerate time to production Oil & Gas Optimize recovery and development efficiency to meet growing demand in oil, gas, and mining Materials Science Discovery and invention of new materials with increased performance; understand dynamic reactions, catalysts, and nanomaterials Life Sciences Gain deeper understanding of cellular and structural biology; explore the relationships between cell structures and functions
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10. What is Intellectual Property:
Patents
Trade Secrets
Trademarks
Copyrights
Emerging ideas…
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11. Patent
A patent is a limited right granted by the government (all patents are limited by country) that allows the patentee to stop other people or companies from making, using or selling a specifically defined invention.
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12. FEI IP over time merger 15M$ settlement with Hitachi
Philips Electron Optics BV
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13. Reasons for IP Company phase Reasons Startup
Protect invention, attract investors
Small
Low prio; protect only big inventions
Medium
Defensive: mutually assured destruction
Large
Discourage competition, enable cross-licenses, stakeholder value, freedom to operate
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14. Bottlenecks make Good IP:
Maider López Ataskoa
Identify key step in a work-flow or process.
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15. Cumulative patenting costs
One time cost to write application is ±15 kUSD
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16. Competitor countries Competitors can: Merge/acquire Move production
(dis)appear
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17. Customer countries
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19. R&D
R&D is expensive.
10% of FEI’s revenue is turned into R&D (~100 M$ per year!)
To make the most of it
We want to be able to use the R&D
We do not want others to profit
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20. Recapitulate: what is a patent?
A patent gives the patentee the right to forbid other to produce, offer for sale or commercially use the invention.
To have an invention granted, is must be new and inventive, i.e. non-obvious to the skilled person.
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21. What is a patent not?
A patent thus does not give you a right to do something!
What is already on the market (publicly available), or shown to (potential) customers, cannot be patented anymore.
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22. Example: Assume party A patents a bicycle,
Assume party B patents a bike with a motor
Patent situation:
Party A can make bikes, but not bikes with a motor
Party B cannot make a bike with a motor.
Rationale: party B must infringe on the patent of party A to make its motorbike.
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23. Strategies Forbid production
Production can be moved to another country
Competitors leave the field and enter the field
Forbid sales
An important brand cannot say to customers: we are not allowed to sell in the USA
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24. IP strategies Country selection Licensing Joint development
Cross-licensing
Trolls
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25. Patent searching by inventors
Pro
Ensure freedom to operate
Be inspired by others
Forbidden by FEI policy
Triple damages in US
Risk of misinterpretation
Thermo Fisher policy not known yet
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26. Litigation
Suing is extremely expensive (in the extreme per country, and lawyers are too expensive anyway!)
mostly out-of-court settlements
settlements can easily exceed 1 M$
FEI versus Hitachi X-license (2012): M$ 15
ASML versus Nikon (2004): M$ 150
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27. Thank You