Last Updated on February 9, 2026 by Rob Cashman
TL;DR – Ocean Tomo pioneered market-based patent valuation nearly two decades ago, introducing auctions and the Bid-Ask Market® to bring transparency, liquidity, and consensus pricing to IP transactions. While traditional analyst-driven valuation remains critical for litigation, licensing, and complex portfolios, Ocean Tomo’s hybrid approach—combining market signals with expert analysis—represents the most balanced method for determining patent value today.
Nearly twenty years ago, Ocean Tomo’s market-based patent valuation methods—live auctions and the Bid-Ask Market®—brought transparency, liquidity, and consensus pricing to intellectual property transactions at a time when valuation was dominated by individual analysts. Today, their hybrid model—blending market signals with expert analysis—remains the most balanced approach for assessing patent value, providing insights essential to IP professionals, patent attorneys, investors, and technology strategists.
I recently read an article titled “Ocean Tomo reinforces its expertise in radio frequency, wireless technology and spectrum with the addition of director Dan Sleeter,” which prompted me to revisit my reflections on patent valuation nearly two decades ago. Back in 2008, I observed Ocean Tomo’s innovative efforts to introduce market-based patent valuation and liquidity into intellectual property transactions—a departure from traditional, analyst-driven models where a single expert determined a patent’s worth.
At the time, I noted that Ocean Tomo appeared to be moving patents “from being property that can be sold … to a commodity that can be valued and traded by public opinion and/or rules of supply and demand, akin to stocks in the stock market.” Their approach combined early patent auctions with transparent price discovery mechanisms, creating a market-driven framework that was virtually unprecedented in the IP space.
Even then, I cautioned that consensus-based patent valuation carries risks: auction dynamics can be influenced by strategic bidding, thin participation, or speculative behavior that may misrepresent a patent’s true economic value. Nearly twenty years later, these observations remain relevant, though Ocean Tomo’s tools and hybrid models for valuation have grown considerably more sophisticated.
Patent Valuation Methods: Then and Now
In November 2008, I published an article titled “Ocean Tomo and Patent Valuation Methods,” in which I discussed what I then viewed as an innovative—and somewhat untested—attempt to introduce market-based pricing and liquidity into patent transactions. At the time, patent valuation was still dominated by a relatively small group of analysts (a role I once occupied myself), typically operating in private, bilateral settings and often serving the interests of a single buyer, seller, or transaction.
In that article, I wrote:
“Ocean Tomo appears to be the next step in moving patents … from … being property that can be sold … to a commodity that can be valued and traded by public opinion and/or rules of supply and demand, akin to stocks in the stock market.”
I also acknowledged what I believed then—and still believe now—to be the principal risk of consensus-driven markets: that pricing can be distorted by behavior that undermines reliable valuation, including thin participation, strategic bidding, or speculative dynamics untethered from underlying economic value.
Why Patent Auctions Struggle With Liquidity
At the time, I was not certain whether Ocean Tomo would succeed in its mission. What was clear, however, was that they were serious. They assembled a strong team, ran a professional operation, and positioned themselves deliberately at the higher end of the market—emphasizing quality over volume in how they presented both their services and their clients’ intellectual property.
Looking back, I am genuinely pleased to see that much of that early effort has paid off. That said, the broader ambition—making intellectual property routinely tradable in a mainstream marketplace—remains a work in progress. But even today, buying and selling patents does not resemble the liquidity or visibility of traditional financial markets, and I remain uncertain whether it ever fully will—though incremental progress toward liquidity remains essential for any market-based model to succeed.
One reason for this persistent gap is structural. Unlike stocks or commodities, patents are not fungible assets. Each patent is economically unique, and its value is highly context-dependent—shaped by claim scope, validity risk, infringement posture, market adoption, jurisdictional considerations, and the strategic objectives of specific buyers and sellers. These factors resist standardization, which in turn constrains liquidity and complicates efforts to rely on purely market-based pricing mechanisms. As a result, even well-designed marketplaces struggle to achieve the participation depth necessary for stable and reliable price discovery.
Ocean Tomo was not only an innovator in patent sales, acquisitions, and licensing—they were a trailblazer in attempting to operationalize intellectual property as a market asset. That pioneering role was both their greatest strength and their greatest challenge. They entered a field long characterized by structural inertia, opacity, and friction, but in doing so they also confronted a fundamental problem: insufficient transaction volume and market attention, particularly in the early auction years, which would skew pricing outcomes, and would ultimately endanger their patent auction model.
Their early live patent auctions made this tension visible. While the 2006 auction included hundreds of patents, many failed to meet reserve prices. This illustrated a structural limitation of using patent auctions to create a pure marketplace for the buying and selling of intellectual property. And yet, despite these challenges, Ocean Tomo still advanced their proof-of-concept: that patents could, in fact, be sold in an open market setting.
Market-Based Patent Valuation Models
Nearly twenty years later, the core tension I identified in 2008 remains unresolved: market forces versus expert analysis. What has changed is the sophistication with which that tension is now managed.
Any reassessment of patent valuation since 2008 must also account for the evolving legal landscape. Over the last two decades, changes in subject-matter eligibility doctrine, the rise of administrative validity challenges through post-grant proceedings, and refinements in damages jurisprudence have materially increased uncertainty around patent enforceability and monetization. These developments have affected not only how patents are litigated, but also how they are valued—further complicating attempts to rely on market mechanisms alone to reflect economic reality.
Ocean Tomo did not cling to their single model of using patent auctions. Instead, they adapted—sometimes decisively—while continuing to experiment with how intellectual property can be valued, transferred, and understood.
Market-Based Patent Valuation Models in Practice: Ocean Tomo Since 2008
1. Public Patent Auctions as a Valuation Mechanism
Ocean Tomo originated the world’s first public, multi-lot live patent auctions in 2006. These auctions created one of the earliest transparent forums for patent price discovery at a time when most transactions were private, opaque, and highly negotiated. While the auction model revealed participation and pricing challenges, it also produced real transactional data and permanently altered how the industry thought about patent liquidity.
2. The Intellectual Property Bid-Ask Market®
In 2008, Ocean Tomo launched the Intellectual Property Bid-Ask Market®, a platform designed to publish bids, asks, and completed transaction prices. Unlike traditional auctions, this model reduced friction, avoided the expense and spectacle of live events, and provided a more continuous mechanism for market-based price discovery. Over time, this approach proved to be a more scalable and efficient alternative.
3. Patent Indexes and Quantitative Valuation Tools
Ocean Tomo also developed proprietary analytical tools, including the Ocean Tomo 300® Patent Index, designed to measure patent value relative to corporate market capitalization. These patent-based indexes were published on major exchanges and, at times, outperformed traditional benchmarks—underscoring a point that is now widely accepted: intangible assets, particularly patents, are material drivers of corporate value.
4. Expert Analysis Through Strategic Integration (J.S. Held and TechPats™)
In 2022, Ocean Tomo was acquired by global consulting firm J.S. Held, integrating its intellectual property expertise into a broader technical, financial, and strategic advisory platform. In 2023, that platform expanded further with the integration of TechPats™ (formerly Technology, Patents & Licensing, Inc., based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania)—a firm long known for its deep technical patent analysis, reverse engineering, and patent intelligence capabilities. Having worked as a patent analyst at TPL earlier in my career, I am familiar firsthand with the rigor of its analytical approach and the type of technical depth it brings to complex valuation, licensing, and enforcement matters. That expertise is particularly relevant in technically dense areas such as wireless communications, RF systems, and spectrum-dependent technologies.
5. Ongoing Market-Based Transactions
While Ocean Tomo moved away from traditional live auctions years ago (selling that portion of the business in 2009), the Bid-Ask Market® remains active, facilitating real patent transactions and public price signaling. Recent listings of specialized portfolios—such as anti-counterfeiting systems and mixed-reality navigation technologies—reflect a more targeted, industry-specific approach to market participation.
Expert Analysis in Patent Litigation and Licensing
When I wrote in 2008 about patents being recontextualized as commodities, I was observing a shift away from purely analyst-centric valuation toward market-based price discovery. Today, both models coexist—and both have limits.
Market Consensus Models
Strengths
- Transparent price discovery through observable transactions
- Reduced reliance on a single analyst’s assumptions
- Real liquidity where participation exists
Limitations
- Thin markets in many technology sectors
- Behavioral distortions and strategic bidding
- Prices that may reflect negotiation dynamics rather than economic contribution
Analyst-Driven Valuation
Expert valuation remains indispensable in contexts where markets alone fail to capture value, including:
- Litigation and expert testimony
- M&A due diligence
- Tax, accounting, and financial reporting
- Strategic licensing and portfolio development
In these settings, experienced economists and technologists can surface value drivers—such as infringement leverage, technological substitutability, or revenue attribution—that market pricing alone may obscure.
Hybrid Models for Patent Valuation
If patent value exists on a continuum, then neither pure market pricing nor pure expert opinion is sufficient on its own.
Market pricing works best where participation is deep and frequent. Expert valuation is essential where technologies are unique, information is asymmetric, or value is realized indirectly. In 2008, I cautioned that consensus markets invite behavior that can distort value. In 2026, that caution still holds.
Market mechanisms are effective at price discovery, but price discovery is not the same as value determination. Without being grounded in technical, legal, and economic analysis, bid and ask prices may reflect negotiation posture, strategic signaling, or informational asymmetries rather than the intrinsic or realizable economic value of a patent.
For that reason, I view Ocean Tomo’s evolution toward hybrid valuation models—combining market signals with rigorous expert analysis—as the most intellectually honest approach to patent valuation today. It reflects a mature understanding of both the promise and the limits of commoditizing intellectual property.
Looking forward, advances in data aggregation, patent intelligence, and artificial intelligence may further narrow the gap between market signals and expert valuation. Automated claim analysis, infringement detection, and comparative portfolio analytics increasingly support more informed pricing decisions. Still, even as tools improve, informed judgment—legal, technical, and economic—will remain central. Patents derive value not only from what they claim, but from how, where, and by whom they can be asserted or licensed.
Conclusion: The Future of Patent Valuation
Nearly twenty years after my initial article, market-based patent valuation is more sophisticated, more transparent, and more structurally supported than it was in 2008. Ocean Tomo has played a meaningful and consistent role in that evolution—not only as an innovator, but as a trailblazer willing to test ideas that the market was not yet ready to fully absorb.
The tension between liquidity and analytic rigor remains. But for practitioners, litigators, and innovators alike, understanding when to rely on market signals—and when to lean on expert judgment—is essential to making sound legal and commercial decisions about intellectual property.
For that reason, I continue to cheer Ocean Tomo on from the sidelines. From the beginning, they sought to solve a real and persistent problem in intellectual property law: how to move valuable innovation from one set of hands to another in a way that is transparent, credible, and economically meaningful.
For those interested in the original foundation of these thoughts, my 2008 article remains available here:
👉 https://www.cashmanip.com/ocean-tomo-and-patent-valuation-methods/