By Cassandra Willyard

Intellectual property isn’t something you can see or touch. Yet some companies are trying to sell medical patents the same way antiques dealers sell ancient coins or fine art—at live auctions. Will this new model work? Cassandra Willyard explores the weird world of intellectual property auctions.

On March 31, a group of about 350 inventors, entrepreneurs, lawyers and brokers made their way past the twin lion statues that flank the entrance to the old Bowery Savings Bank, a Beaux Arts building just beyond the eastern edge of Manhattan’s fashionable SoHo district. They gathered in the foyer, nibbling canapés, sipping Bloody Marys and exchanging business cards. Among the crowd was Ketan Desai, a molecular biologist who had just arrived from Easton, Pennsylvania and hadn’t yet met anyone. “I’ve just been standing around observing people’s facial expressions,” he said. Desai finished his glass of white wine. And then he joined the sea of dark suits filing into the ballroom.

The men and women who took their seats under the ballroom’s Venetian glass skylight weren’t the kind of people who frequent Sotheby’s or Christie’s in search of jade necklaces or Chinese art. This crowd was after something far less tangible: intellectual property, or ‘IP’.

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Image: ICAP