Conventions for patent use and legal intermediaries

This chapter provides an historical overview of different conventions for valorizing IPRs and their synergy over time. Patents have become negotiable assets and multi-faceted tools: for the protection and diffusion of innovation, as an instrument of market power and technological valorization, as a signal and instrument of negotiation, and as a valuable corporate asset. It analyzes precisely how legal intermediaries, in particular patent lawyers, contribute to the diffusion of these conventions defining new uses of IPRs. The chapter shows how the recent financialization of the patent is concomitant with the emergence of a market for patents, one struggling to develop despite the emergence of new intermediaries whose business models go well beyond the traditional activity of “matchmaker.” They assume multiple functions within increasingly diversified firms and behave like a “marketmaker,” notably by aggregating patent portfolios. The chapter’s conclusion questions the development of these non-practicing entities (patent trolls in particular) whose activities are not in line with the objectives of the patent system.