“My professional work, much like SIGGRAPH itself, has always interwoven creative, technical, and innovation throughout,” says M.K. Haley, SIGGRAPH 2007 IP Marketplace chair. Haley has been involved with SIGGRAPH since 1989—or since before she had a career, as she tells it.
Haley, who manages collaboration technologies and initiatives for Walt Disney New Technology and New Media, was entrusted with the position of chair after the unfortunate and untimely death of the original chair, Bill Kovacs. “Bill had done a great job of setting up the mission of the IP Marketplace,” she explains. “He defined what it should (and should not) be based upon thorough research, as well as his own experience with intellectual property. With Bill’s great foundation and my own history with the organization, I was able to hit the ground running on this important initiative.”
IP Marketplace, making its debut at SIGGRAPH 2007, is a listing service for intellectual property. Inventors and owners of patents, software libraries, circuit cores, and so on can list them for sale or license in exchange for a nominal fee. IP listings are available online and are presented in poster format at SIGGRAPH 2007. Potential buyers can peruse the listings and contact sellers in person at the conference to potentially purchase or license them. The details of each deal will be decided solely by the buyer and seller.
“No other place in our industry has such a fantastic mix of academic, business, industry, creative, and technical people, all with something great to share with each other,” Haley says. “It seemed natural to develop a tool and a program to facilitate these sorts of pairings. Smaller research labs and academics may not have the expertise or business models in-house to monetize their IP in the fullest way possible. Meanwhile, there are plenty of folks with the expertise and strategy just looking for good ideas. It seemed natural to broker the introductions.”
IP listings can be viewed online at www.creativeheads.net/ipmarketplace.
“It is an ongoing online initiative, it does not just live in one space and time, and it will serve to connect our community before, during, and after the conference,” Haley notes. “If one piece of IP finds a good home as a result of the IP Marketplace, it’s a wholly invaluable initiative!”