Context: Two months ago we reported on legendary patent monetizer Erich Spangenberg being back in this business and intrigued by the Unified Patent Court (UPC) opportunity (December 4, 2024 ip fray article).
What’s new: His new company, SIM IP, just announced on LinkedIn a definitive agreement to acquire Ultraleap’s haptics and extended reality (XR) patent portfolio as part of a new licensing partnership. Ultraleap is the result of a U.S.-UK startup merger ( Leap Motion and Ultrahaptics) in 2019 and has received funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars from investors such as Tencent and Mayfair Capital (company info page). Also, we have found a webpage according to which SIM IP is currently in the process of going public (November 6, 2024 Spectral AI announcement).
Direct impact: The transaction is expected to consummate next month (March 2025). SIM IP will be Ultraleap’s long-term partner for the monetization (and obviously, if necessary, enforcement) of those patents. Ultraleap itself continues to focus on making products reminiscent of the hand-tracking technology in the Minority Report movie featuring Tom Cruise.
Wider ramifications: A couple of months ago, it became known that SIM IP acquired “key 5G patents” from a South Korean university (November 2024 LinkedIn post by SIM IP). SIM IP indicates that it wants acquire more patents, be they standard-essential patents (SEPs) such as in the Korean deal or non-SEPs such as the IP acquired from Ultraleap.
As a by-product of ip fray‘s own IP dealmaking-related activities (January 15, 2025 ip fray article), we heard from sources that Ultraleap’s patents were on the market. According to rumor, the company tried for years to work out a commercial relationship with Apple that never came to fruition, and later a Big Tech (maybe Apple itself?) offered a nine-figure U.S. dollar amount for those haptics and XR patents. The amount is plausible given that Ultraleap is known to have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capital and private equity investors.
If it is true that one of the Big Tech players wanted to buy those patents, it validates both the commercial significance of the portfolio and SIM IP’s ability to make very large IP transactions happen, even against powerful and deep-pocketed rival bidders.
The announcement says that Erich Spangenberg, Dr. Colin Bristow, “and a team of expert financial, technical, and IP specialists” made the deal happen and managed to “meet[] the specific business needs of this innovation leader.”
Given that an announcement indirectly related to SIM IP’s IPO preparations was made three months ago, the company’s shares may be publicly traded soon.