Ilanit Appelfeld, I work with companies to protect their technology, patents, brands, designs and trade secrets.

Early in my career, I was fortunate enough to gain valuable insight into the creation of a strong IP. This happened when two companies asked me to assist in selling their patent portfolio to a multi-national.

I was excited by the idea of selling patents and decided to give it a try. I contacted the potential buyers, explained the technology and displayed the merchandise (patents) for sale.

To my surprise, the potential buyers were not impressed. Confident that this was a negotiation tactic, I waited and waited, but no offer was made.

This was strange since I knew for a fact that the potential purchaser was very much interested in the products behind the patents. I started to suspect that this was not a negotiation tactic.

With the risk of looking eager, I decided to call the other side, in order to find out what was going on. It was in that call that I realized what the problem was. Apparently, the way the patents were drafted, could not allow the purchaser or any other purchaser to defend and support sales of the products. The products were great, but the patents were just not “doing the job”.

Knowing that there was a lesson here, I asked to meet with the buyer’s team.

What followed later was better than any mentoring session. The buyer's team shared the specific things that they were looking for when representing buyers. This information provided a critical breakthrough for me. They shared their very valuable insights with me which I could use to create stronger and better protection for my clients’ technology.

Although the specific deal did not go through, the insights that I have received from these encounters were far greater than any successful deal.

Since then, I took those formulas and combined them with my experience. I created strategies and am proud to see that they were working! These strategies were put to the test time and time again and examined during investments and M&A processes as well as in court proceedings.