Startups Intricacies of IP base owned by (potential) partner |
| Intricacies of IP base owned by (potential) partner Posted: 11 Jan 2022 06:07 AM PST Hi everyone! Recently, we (a couple of friends and me - with previous exit and startup experience) have been looking into partnering up with a nice fellow who has - as a side venture of his regular business - been creating an IP base in a number of markets for a technology (hardware-side) that he intends to commercialize in the B2C and some part of the construction sectors. To us, it seems a bit as if he is a little too much spread out in the pursuit of too many possibilities without trying to finish one of them. Enter us, who see potential to build a B2B case, and a way to probably move it to the point where one could go for some venture funding for scaling up, eventually. So now I have a couple of questions: - the original IP (even though I'm fairly sure there will be more once the B2B solution is pursued) is still with his original company - for this to work we'd either need a license or transfer of rights or we'd invest in the original company. The sheer number of countries and projects that he went for, however, means that he considers all the resources spent already (and probably rightfully so) a significant investment on his part, so he'd sell shares at a premium rather, even before the experimental phase of building it to VC-readiness has passed. - If we agree to start a separate company together - with a possible license - then how would one preferably structure the deal (like B2B-sector vs the others, reduced licensing cost, initial investments in other company would count less toward shares of the new one because IP rights still reside outside the company and the license is only sector-based). Or is this setup too risky, because of potential loss of IP rights later on? - In recent discussions we also feel that because of the sheer amount of previous work performed with different focus on his part, that we may not see eye-to-eye on how to pursue this particular project - like what needs to be done first and to what end and such. Is such a disagreement already a show-stopper, if it occurs this early on? There may be a fundamental conflict of interest there also because the side-venture of the original company is meant to prop up the sales of the original company, somehow, meaning that cost-optimization is not necessarily a goal here for his intended commercialization of the technology or his influence on the new company may hinder its development/hamstring some business decisions. All that being said, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts, thanks for reading - cheers! [link] [comments] |
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