First Look: i4e

A new collaboration service for inventor-types called Invent4Equity, or i4e, launched today. The company behind the platform, Invequity, a company with deep experience in patent law, formed i4e “to provide inventors a better way to complete, patent, market, and license their inventions”.

The idea is to join, define some project, and then attract other people to join up to help with the invention, whether hardware, service, or software. I fiddled around a bit, defining a ‘perpetual motion machine’ project. The service provides a directory of other invention-oriented users that can be searched to find likely contributors. Right now there are only a handful, which limits the usefulness of the service.

But the real showstopper might be the notion of who owns the ideas created in i4e:

[from the i4e About page].

i4e says that it ‘co-invests’ in Projects, who owns the patented technology, and why?

i4e (or an i4e affiliate) is the Assignee or owner of all patents created on the i4e platform and accepted through i4e’s IdeaService. There are several reasons why i4e is assigned the rights to the patents. First, i4e makes a significant investment into each idea accepted and needs confidence that it can handle all of the legal and administrative tasks required for patenting, licensing and enforcing the patents. Further, and perhaps more importantly, other i4e collaborating members who assist on projects need confidence that the equity they earned in a project is secure and that significant efforts are being taken to generate revenue. i4e is a community working together to make the most of every idea and to rewarding those that helped along the way.

If I help or collaborate with another, who owns the patent, and why?

If you assist another i4e member on a project the resulting patents are assigned to i4e with the project members receiving a contractual right to their equity interest in all revenue tied to the patents (including Revenue Sharing). As a collaborating member, your efforts are protected as i4e records and administers your equity interest in the patent and all resulting revenues. Further, you can take comfort knowing that i4e is taking all necessary steps to bring positive results and that no one can circumvent your interests. i4e is a community forum where your efforts are rewarded.

What if after collaborating the Project members want to start a company around the idea?

Not a problem, i4e offers a Project Rollout service. Project Rollout is a service that helps the Project members create an entity, the corporate paperwork reflecting the established Project members equity splits, and assignment of the inventions and patents into the entity. All members in a project must agree to have the project rolled out to ensure that every member is fully protected and rollout elections must be made at the appropriate time. Contact us at contact(at)i4e(dot)com if your Project members are inerested.

I looked into the allocation of equity capability (which crashed when I tried to allocate myself 10% equity for $0 invested):

So, the company reserves a chunk of equity and the ownership of the patents for any i4e-managed project. Seems like a hefty bite to me.

I intend to meet with the founders in the near term — they are based in Reston VA, where I occasionally visit my family, house, and car, and repack.