Erise IP shareholder Jason Mudd was recently featured by Missouri Lawyers Weekly in a story looking at how the COVID-19 pandemic could be a reason for an uptick in non-practicing entities (NPEs) asserting patents.
Erise client Unified Patents, in April, released a study that found the number of lawsuits filed by NPEs and other patent-assertion entities nearly doubled in the years following the Great Recession of 2008.
Mudd noted he saw “a slight uptick in NPE activity in the early months of the pandemic that is consistent with Unified’s hypothesis,” Missouri Lawyers Weekly wrote.
Mudd urges companies that are facing financial difficulties due to the pandemic and considering selling IP that they’re no longer using to not sell it to NPEs.
“In other words, transfer it to an actual operating entity, as opposed to going to an NPE,” he said.