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Posts Tagged ‘Pricewaterhousecoopers’

Patent infringement lawsuits raking in the big bucks

It’s a good time to be in the patent litigation business, it seems, as “non-practicing entities” are regularly receiving higher damages in patent cases than companies that are actually selling products and services. That’s according to a new report on patent litigation from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which examined 1,400 patent cases in order to get a feel for the current landscape. Even though patent reform is a big talking point in government right now, it’s clear that the upper hand currently belongs to those who aren’t making products.

Non-practicing entities—NPEs, also known as patent trolls—have gotten more than double the awards for their patent cases than practicing entities over the last 14 years, according to the consulting firm. Between 1995 and 2008, awards to NPEs ranged from $2.2 million to $10.6 million with a median at about $4.4 million. When narrowed down to just the last seven years, the difference in awards was more than triple in favor of NPEs—the median was at $12 million for NPEs, compared to $3.4 million for practicing entities.

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MoneyTree report: Venture capital still rebounding

Contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, venture capital investment is still growing, at least according to the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

Yes, that’s pretty much the exact opposite of what Dow Jones VentureSource concluded last week — that a potential VC rebound had stalled. It looks like the disagreement has less to do with the Q3 numbers, where MoneyTree shows a total of $4.8 billion in venture capital investment, compared to $5.1 billion shown by VentureSource, and more with Q2, where there was a much bigger gap in the numbers (MoneyTree: $4.1 billion, VentureSource: $5.4 billion).

Tracy Lefteroff, global managing partner of venture capital at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said the difference boils down to varying methodologies. VentureSource includes debt financing while the MoneyTree report doesn’t, he said, so MoneyTree is a better indicator of “permanent investment.” Let’s hope that’s true, since MoneyTree shows a nice, steady increase in VC investment since last year’s financial crash, when venture capital plummeted along with everything else.

But even if we look at things optimistically and believe the numbers will continue going up, that doesn’t necessarily mean things will eventually return to the high investment levels of the last few years.

“We’ve returned to more of a historical norm for venture capital, one that’s not only sustainable, but will go up for here,” Lefteroff said.

In terms of industry, cleantech saw the serious growth, with an increase of 89 percent of Q2, to $898 million invested in 57 deals. Software, meanwhile, dropped 9 percent to $622 million invested in 122 deals. This may reflect some permanent changes in the software industry, Lefteroff said, as startup work shifts from big, ambitious platforms to smaller applications.

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Venture Capital Dollars Stabilize in Second Quarter at Mid-1990s Levels

Venture capital dollars going to startups in the U.S. stabilized in the second quarter at $3.7 billion, according to the latest MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. The venture money invested in the quarter is still only about half of what it was a year ago (when it was $7.2 billion in the second quarter of 2008), but is 15 percent above the low point in the first quarter of 2009 (when it was $3.5 billion). All in all, VC investments are trending at mid-1990s levels, which isn’t such a bad thing.

The average deal size came up a little bit to $6 million, from $5.3 million last quarter. Seed and early stage investing picked up after venture capitalists fled to the perceived safety of later-stage investments in recent previous quarters.

The rebound, if you want to call it that, hasn’t hit the Internet sector yet. Internet deals brought in only $524 million in the quarter, down from $593 million the quarter before and $1.7 billion a year ago. Clean tech isn’t doing so hot either, with only $274 million invested during the second quarter compared to $911 million a year ago. Most of the action came from biotech and medical devices, which saw bigger jumps in funding during the quarter to $88 million and $628 million, respectively.

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