Moneyball for inventors: Reed Tech's deal

Reed Tech, the 1,000-worker, Horsham-based intellectual-property (IP) company that manages what the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office calls its "data-capture process" and advises inventors, engineers and lawyers on how best to apply, has completed its first-ever acquisition in its 48-year history, buying Minnesota-based PatentCore and its platform, PatentAdvisor, for a sum neither party will disclose.

What's PatentAdvisor? "Think of us like in Moneyball," the book and movie about baseball strategies based on probability, says PatentCore founder Chris Holt. "We bring statistics to the patent application process," and advise Big Tech and start-up clients on which patent applications are most likely to be approved, based on prior patents and the record of the arm of the patent office that's reviewing each proposal.

Reed Tech is part of LexisNexis, the law and news archive, which is in turn owned by Anglo-Dutch publishing cooperative Reed Elsevier. Besides easing applications for USPTO, Reed Tech has "a nice business in the life-sciences industry," vice president Ethan Eisner told me. "We do a lot of work with pharmaceutical companies and medical-device companies, and with FDA directly, helping the companies meet regulatory requirements around product labels and unique identifying information."

PatentCore is a seven-year-old, mostly self-funded firm that went to market with Reed Tech's help nearly two years ago. Before going into business, Holt was a patent applications lawyer in Minneapolis, home to Medtronic, Boston Scientific and other medical-device makers. "We have an extensive roadmap to build this business into the future," he told me. "We'll focus on product development -- what we do best -- leveraging (Reed Tech's) salesforce and business assets."

Eisner says he's looking for other acquisitions that could be a "good fit to our suite of IP solutions to serve customers around the globe" for lawyers and other patent pros "at every step of the patent workflow."