Clients
Ocean Tomo provides Expert Opinion, Management Consulting, and Advisory services focused on matters involving intellectual property (IP) and other intangible assets. Practice offerings address economic damage calculations and testimony; business licensing strategy and contract interpretation; trade secret reasonable measures; asset and business valuation; strategy and risk management consulting; merger and acquisition advisory; debt and equity private placement; and IP brokerage.
Subsidiaries of the firm include Ocean Tomo Investments Group, LLC, a registered broker-dealer. As a part of J.S. Held, Ocean Tomo works alongside more than 1500 professionals globally and assists clients – corporations, insurers, law firms, governments, and institutional investors – on complex technical, scientific, and financial matters across all assets and value at risk.
Business
Intangible assets represent 90% of corporate value.
The Board of Directors is ultimately responsible for protecting this value for the benefit of shareholders. Ocean Tomo advises on best practice and lasting insights to both realize value as well as manage risk. Firm Managing Directors also serve as Directors in select cases, often chairing a Board committee on intellectual property.
The role of the CEO requires strategic, operational, risk management and valuation insight. Ocean Tomo uniquely offers senior executives Financial Expert, Management Consulting and Advisory services addressing the full range of executive needs.
Day-to-day responsibility for company intellectual property assets rests with the Chief IP Officer (CIPO). Ocean Tomo serves as an independent voice to these leaders assisting them with best-in-class insights on managing both the integration of IP with business strategy as well as IP operations to further the company’s business objectives.
The internal and external pressure on corporate innovation has never been greater. Several factors influencing the innovation process include: the shortening of technology life cycles; acceleration of technological convergence; increased global competition; reduced product and service loyalty along with ever increasing consumer expectation. Ocean Tomo serves the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) assisting them with best-in-class insights on optimizing innovation, employing a variety of innovation channels designed to support internal R&D processes.
Ocean Tomo services Fortune 1000 companies by providing advisory services, including guidance on intellectual property (IP) monetization and transactions. We help companies identify premium IP to conduct an asset sale, assisting in the acquisition of strategic IP assets, helping raise capital, supporting an exit strategy transaction or spin-outs/spin-ins.
Competition is driven by scale, execution and innovation. The strongest middle market companies often rely on proprietary innovation and branding to earn share from the largest market participants. Ocean Tomo has a strong middle market constituency with assignments often originating through our Management Consulting team.
Intellectual property assets are in large part listed in the open data bases or promoted through marketing materials. As a result, there is growing attention by public company investors as to how these assets are utilized by management. Over an extended period of time, the Ocean Tomo 300® Patent Index has shown that firms with the highest quality patent assets outperform their peers.
Public company executives routinely draw upon Ocean Tomo’s entire service offering to further their IP objectives.
Leveraging Ocean Tomo’s strategic processes and patent driven research we help start-ups determine the field of opportunity — areas where there is freedom to operate and likelihood to file patents to protect new solutions. Ocean Tomo makes intellectual property valuation, investment, risk and transactional advisory services accessible to start-up enterprises.
As an important and significant asset, the transfer of IP with market participants as well as within or between related parties often brings forward significant tax issues. Ocean Tomo assists tax practitioners with valuation as well as structuring.
The General Counsel of the company is always a key player in formulating the right management strategy and response to market threats and opportunities. Ocean Tomo’s Financial Expert team works with the legal office both on a project basis, generally in conjunction with outside counsel, but also directly with the company through an on-going consultation agreement.
Finding, supporting and reviewing in-place license contracts is key to the continued high return performance for the corporate and university licensing manager. Ocean Tomo assists throughout this intellectual property life cycle with emphasis on compliance / auditing of existing agreements.
The needs of patent information specialists vary greatly whether they are in-house at a company, university or laboratory or outside either working independently or supporting the prosecution or litigation team at a law firm. Ocean Tomo professionals work collaboratively with patent information specialists to identify and analyze large amounts of data to support decision-making on behalf of companies, universities, laboratories, law firms as well as investment professionals.
Law Firm
Ocean Tomo brings our expert capabilities in intangible asset and intellectual property (IP) valuation to support bankruptcy and restructuring matters. Disputes related to IP rights and their value are increasingly front-and-center in the bankruptcy and restructuring process.
Ocean Tomo financial experts support commercial litigation attorneys and their clients in breach of contract, intellectual property, insurance, partnership disputes providing forensic accounting, litigation support and related expert testimony.
Ocean Tomo financial experts support corporate securities attorneys and their clients in capital market transactions, structured debt and equity offerings. We conduct valuations in order to support public and private company transactions including mergers, acquisitions, joint venture interests and other licensing-based transactions.
IP litigation naturally divides between matters of validity, infringement and damages. Ocean Tomo’s legacy and core expertise lies in its Opinion Services with a team of financial experts and technical advisors to accurately present the value and impact of IP rights.
Institution
Governments around the world now recognize and formally address the need to have a national innovation and IP policy. Many efforts now exist to directly participate in patent acquisition as a resource to spur local economic development and further global competitiveness. Ocean Tomo’s assistance in these efforts spans work with national patent office leadership, economic development committees and sovereign fund managers.
Private and federally funded laboratories alike are deploying sophisticated management strategies recognizing that intellectual property is the product. Ocean Tomo works with labs helping to assess the ‘continue versus kill’ project investment decision as well as the sale or license of resulting intellectual property residual to the focus on stakeholder objectives.
University research efforts have unique objectives that span publication to start-ups. At the same time, the non-profit nature of most laboratories combined with access to graduate student abilities requires an appreciation of this unique environment. Ocean Tomo works with university technology managers to prioritize efforts seeking commercial monetization.
Investor
Intellectual property is a recognized asset class capturing the attention of debt, equity and derivative investors. Ocean Tomo assists capital managers through its Valuation, Research and Investment practice groups with an envious track record of having participated in many of the largest IP transactions over the last decade.
The venture community has long recognized the importance of IP protection for competitive advantage. Focus on patent filing for core innovation has now expanded to leveraging venture community entrepreneurial skills through corporate partnerships. Ocean Tomo’s Venture Development team specializes in facilitating such collaboration paving the way to customer contracts, acquisition and investment opportunities and joint IP licensing strategies.
Creator
Ocean Tomo professionals are skilled in the assessment of copyright value, including literary works, artistic presentation, music or software code. Ocean Tomo has helped individuals and companies understand the value of these assets for business planning, monetization or litigation.
Whether a design patent, trademark or other graphic based intangible asset, Ocean Tomo helps designers understand and leverage the value of these intangible assets. Ocean Tomo values industrial designs for business planning, monetization or litigation.
The needs of individual inventors differ from large R&D organizations, largely based on the size of their portfolio and the resources available to commercialize their inventions. Ocean Tomo works with inventors of significant technologies to develop and execute strategies to market or otherwise monetize their work.