IP winners, litigation funding dangers and speaking the C-suite language: IP Dealmakers closing highlights

Below is a short breakdown of the highlights from the final day:

Litigation funders, NPEs: ingredients of the system

Litigation funding was among the many topics discussed by a panel moderated by Fred Fabricant of Fabricant Rubino Lambrianakos. Mr. Fabricant noted that all of the cases that he has applied to get litigation funding for have had to go through three stages of diligence. And his firm, on principle, will not accept a case if a patentee is “unreasonable”, seeking sky-high judgments.

“Because the bottom line is that if you have oversized recovery, it will be reversed every time by the Federal Circuit,” he warns the audience. “Very few have made it through – and even then, it would have been after at least 10 years of litigation.”

But both CLO and GC of Norwegian Green Solutions, Joachim Herrn, and Andy Spurr, the Head of IP at Ceres Power, a company that licenses its oxide technology to power generation and hydrogen production firms, expressed their concerns over using litigation funding to drive up the value of patents “unjustifiably”.

“There is a human tendency to make you look as good as you want – if you have the financing, you want to ‘window dress’ the value,” Mr. Herrn said. While litigation funding can enable inventors who have good claims to monetize their patents, it can be damaging, he noted. 

Mr. Spurr agreed with his views, urging the audience not to see litigation as a “monetization exercise”.

But what about other debated types of IP monetization? Such as divesting assets to non-practising entities (NPEs)?

Microsoft does not have a policy against selling to NPEs, but it is not something the company has done recently, according to Lisa Dong, the company’s Assistant GC for Patent Conflicts and Licensing.

However, she believes the real issue with any type of IP monetization of this kind is with valuation. Sometimes, when an inventor is granted access to litigation funding, they are convinced they can get billions of dollars from their patents – and it’s those “unrealistic expectations” that are wrong, she said, adding:

“I don’t think of NPEs as an enemy.”

Mr. Herrn agreed that NPEs are merely “an ingredient of the system”. But, he noted, it is important for us to separate the emotional side of being sued by an NPE from what this means for the general value of IP.

Rachel Kelly, Group IP Director of UK chemicals company Johnson Matthey, also noted that it may be easier to justify NPEs when one takes a step further back up the chain:

“If you see a company has invested in R&D then get returns by selling those assets onto another entity, it helps make the initial investment worth it.”

Non-IP speak for the C-suite

In a one-on-one chat, Ocado’s Group GC and Secretary, Mollie Stoker, and Chief IP Counsel, Lucy Wojcik, discussed how IP units and the C-suite can better communicate to get the results they each need more efficiently.

“What is the most important thing for the IP unit to bring?” Mrs. Wojcik asked her fellow panelist.

Qualitative over quantitative was the response she got. The C-suite is not looking for the number of patents the company owns, but it is interested in whether they are the right ones, whether they are being filed in the right jurisdictions, and what their competitors are doing, she stated.

Meanwhile, the IP unit is constantly looking for advance notice on things like whether the company is developing equipment, or if it plans to partner with someone new, which could be critical for the IP team to provide input on. 

But, above all, what each executive needs from each other is the translation of their work for their specific audience. Or, as Mrs. Stoker put it:

“Audience before content: how do you translate the things that you might talk about amongst yourselves to the other teams?”

So IP heads need to be able to explain what they need in “non-IP speak” for the C-suite to be able to:

• Greenlight resources for the team;
• Allocate spending for the portfolios;
• Understand the overall strategy; and
• Understand why litigation needs to occur sometimes (i.e. when defending the R&D a company has heavily invested in).

Meanwhile, the General Counsel needs to call the IP team in at the right time during commercial deals – to avoid major IP issues blocking a deal from getting signed in time.

IP winners 

What does success look like for an IP team? That question was posed to Ceyda Maisami, Chief IP Counsel at HP, Mitsuaki Matsumura, who heads up IP Licensing for AP and EMEA at IBM, and Adalvo’s Chief IP Officer, Toni Santamaria.

For HP’s Mrs. Maisami, if the business has a conversation – whether it’s about marketing, or risk, or strategy – and it gives a place at the table to the IP team, if the IP team’s voice counts, and if the business has an interest in what it has to say: this is success. Success, she believes, is when the whole business stays connected to the outcome and handles major issues as a team.

That was echoed by her fellow panelists, who believe that a successful IP team is in alignment with the wider company’s goals.

Mrs. Maisami also believes that IP works well when it sits within the legal function of a company – like it does at HP. “It allows us to continue to be in proximity with the business, but move with speed and have the right conversations,” she said. “It doesn’t matter about the reporting structure, we just need visibility and communication opportunities.”

HP recently went through a restructuring, which would include the cutting of up to 10% of its workforce (November 25, 2025 Wall Street Journal article). Prior to that, the business had different verticals for each type of IP (trademarks, trade secrets, patents, copyright), but now the company has IP counsels who cover all of the aspects of IP and partner up with an internal client. 

“This gives them more visibility,” she said.

Mr. Matsumara disagreed with this viewpoint. “Ideally, we want the IP department to be completely independent,” he said. Noting that in an “ideal world”, the licensing function would always be under the coporate strategy – as opposed to legal – as they are better accustomed to what the company needs to clear future roadblocks. IP, especially patents, is something very future-looking and entails “bold decisionmaking”, which “legal people are not used to doing”, he emphasized. Currently, IBM’s legal function owns the legal aspects of IP: prosecution, litigation etc., while Mr. Matsumara’s licensing department reports to the Chief Technology Officer and Head of Research.

Meanwhile, Mr. Santamaria said the worst possible department for IP to be under was the commercial function:

“They want you to sell and they will force you to make risky decisions just because they want you to sell.”

One thing that the panelists did reach a consensus on was the use of AI. While they noted that it is not going to be the be-all and end-all, an IP team will not be able to win without AI. 

But, as the audience was reminded by Mr. Matsumara, the importance of in-person meetings and building human reports will never fade.

The panel was moderated by Sonja London, the founder of Fearless IP, and former president of the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI), who ip fray also interviewed last year (February 6, 2025 ip fray article).