Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesGerard Pannekoek, the chief of IPXI, an exchange for patent rights.Patent rights, which are usually bought and sold in private transactions, are set to be publicly traded on a new exchange, which plans to announce its first offering on Wednesday.
The Chicago-based exchange, Intellectual Property Exchange International, which says it is the first of its kind, has attracted a handful of blue-chip companies and prominent universities as its initial members. One of those companies, Royal Philips Electronics, the Dutch electronics giant, is set to begin marketing the rights to a portfolio of more than 600 patent assets.
The Philips portfolio, to be announced in a pair of online presentations on Wednesday, is expected to raise around $35 million, though the exact figure could change.
Two more offerings, which are expected to be announced in the next four to six weeks, will be in the finance and automotive industries, according to Gerard J. Pannekoek, the president and chief executive of IPXI, as the exchange is known.
JPMorgan Chase and Ford Global Technologies, a unit of the Ford Motor Company, are among the exchange’s member companies.
The product traded on the exchange is called a unit license right, a contract that allows the holder to use the underlying technology a certain number of times.
The goal of the exchange, which was established in 2008, is to make the patent licensing marketplace more transparent, said Mr. Pannekoek, who is a former executive of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
The Intellectual Property Exchange International does due diligence on patent offerings and plans to make a “data room” available to prospective buyers, which can include speculative investors and companies looking to use the technology.
Mr. Pannekoek said he was confident the exchange would get off to a strong start.
“The market will immediately recognize that companies will give us assets of significant quality,” he said.
But skeptics wonder if the patent market is mature enough for this new exchange.
“The intellectual property market just started liquefying,” said Ron Epstein, the chief executive of the patent advisory firm Epicenter IP Group, based in Redwood City, Calif. “It went from granite to lava in the last six to eight years. IPXI is trying to go from lava to water.”
Success for IPXI depends on a significant number of buyers and sellers populating the market. Some in the business are taking a wait-and-see attitude.
“The bottom line is, the volume of transactions when it comes to any particular patent portfolio is generally pretty small,” said John A. Amster, the chief executive and co-founder of RPX, a San Francisco-based firm that buys patents on behalf of clients. “It’s not like you need some massive electronic system to do this stuff.”
Still, proponents of the exchange point to the increased transparency it promises to bring to an opaque market. Philips, for its part, was confident enough to buy a 10 percent stake in the company in late 2011.
“The marketplace is not really functioning properly yet. There’s a lack of transparency,” said Ruud Peters, the chief intellectual property officer of Philips. “We will make more offerings in the future. That’s almost certain.”