Silence is Carbon
Posted by: peter on: April 28, 2009
As in a lump of coal. That is, for people, silence may be golden. But for companies publishing the results of their business efforts, silence is a very bad sign.
Take Ocean Tomo’s 2009 Spring Auction which it now calls “IP Market 2009“. That auction was held almost 5 weeks ago (on March 26-27). Yet on Ocean Tomo’s auction results page of today, there is no mention of this auction.
Perhaps you’re thinking that 5 weeks is not enough time for Ocean Tomo to process its data from the March auction. Maybe I’m being too hasty calling them out for hiding the results of that auction.
Well, think again. Look at their press release for the Fall 2008 auction (PDF). It was issued on November 3, 2008 — a mere 4 days after the auction concluded.
No. The reason why Ocean Tomo is hiding the results of their Spring 2009 patent auction is that that auction was an unmitigated disaster for the company. Almost no patents sold at the auction.
One reason I know this is that an industry colleague who attended the auction told me this. But you don’t need even that sort of “insider” knowledge. When a company can’t wait to tell you its results in the good times, you can pretty well deduce the meaning of silence.
Now, in my last posting – Trouble on the High Seas — I noted that Ocean Tomo’s own data from its past auctions indicated its auction business was in sharp decline, foreshadowing trouble for the upcoming Spring auction.
Hate to say I was right, but …
What’s most baffling to me about the demise of this business is that the problem with it seems so obvious (see my earlier posts). Over the past couple of months, I have tried to contact the Ocean Tomo auction staff to raise these issues with them.
What was most amazing to me is that the most responsive Ocean Tomo employee to the emails I was sending to the company was the CEO himself! People under him, to whom he forwarded my mails, simply didn’t respond.
I have never encountered a company in which the CEO graciously and promptly responds to his email, but his staff doesn’t.
Call me a cynic, but I don’t think this company is long for the patent auction business.
4 Responses to "Silence is Carbon"
April 28, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Thanks for the comment John. Yeah, I agree that the down-turned economy played a huge factor in the poor results. In fact, I believe that this down-turn has made people wary of spending money. That is, people need a very good reason to spend money. I further believe that the very best reason for a company to spend money on a patent is that the company faces a potential infringement lawsuit if it doesn’t buy the patent. This is exactly what high quality claim charts in the selling process show. In 2009, the existence of quality claim charts doesn’t mean a patent definitely will sell. But I do believe the converse: i.e. that the absence of claim charts means the patent definitely won’t sell.
April 29, 2009 at 12:03 am
Just a note regarding the unresponsive Ocean Tomo employees comment – it is highly likely that the auction staff you have been sending emails to are not responding because they are no longer with the company. Rather than deactivating the email accounts, the company seems to be forwarding incoming emails to current employees that may or may not be responding.
April 29, 2009 at 1:21 am
Thanks Wendy. Yeah, I think that happened with the first guy the CEO hooked me up with. Dunno about the second guy though. If he left too, then that attrition rate is matched only by the rate of executives fleeing Yahoo! — another f#$%d company. I worked at Yahoo! from 2004-2006 and can testify as to the how and why that company was/is seriously messed up from the inside. But I don’t know about the internal dynamics of Ocean Tomo. I’m just observing that the public smoke signals coming out from that company don’t look too good.
April 28, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I’d consider the results of their last auction being caused by a Perfect Storm of negative factors. They had a record number of lots to auction, a reduced staff (several left prior to the auction likely impacting their pre-auction pitch activity), a recession/credit crunch AND patents are generally under assault in the US (we’ve gone from an overly pro-patent country to a rabidly anti-patent country). So the results of the last auction are not surprising. However, the economy will recover, the anti-patent pendulum will likely swing back (after the innovation bubble pops) and the staff/lot ratio will likely be better in the future.