Publicly-listed company Xenith IP Group Limited (ASX:XIP) announced on 25 November 2016 that it has ‘entered into a binding agreement to acquire Griffith Hack, one of Australia's leading specialist IP firms.’ The acquisition, for an upfront consideration of A$152 million, is scheduled to be completed on 1 February 2017.Regular readers of this blog will be aware that this is just the latest in a series of public listings, acquisitions and consolidation in the Australian market for IP services. As I have written previously, this brave experiment in capital-raising is the result of increasingly challenging market conditions. Public listing can provide firms with the capital they need to make the significant investments necessary to achieve efficiency and productivity gains through deployment and use of new IT infrastructure, and to address the limited growth in demand for traditional IP services through acquisitions and /or diversification, e.g. into a range of new services or into other markets, such as south-east Asian countries.
Upon completion of the acquisition of Griffith Hack, and assuming no staff movements in the meantime (far from a certainty, it must be said), an astonishing 305 of Australia’s 1187 registered patent and/or trade marks attorneys will be employed by firms held by the three publicly listed companies Xenith IP, IPH Limited (ASX:IPH) and QANTM IP Limited (ASX:QIP). That is 25.7% of members of Australian-based registered attorneys!
I would also note that one other characteristic of the changes sweeping the attorney professions in Australia has been generally poor communication with many affected stakeholders (i.e. employees). In the case of the Griffith Hack acquisition, rumours that something was afoot have been circulating for some time. The Griffith Hack staff with whom I happen to have spoken in recent weeks have generally known no more or less than the rest of us about what has been going on. I learned of the acquisition plans not from Xenith’s ASX announcement, but via the Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk column (paywalled, sorry) on the preceding day. I expect that this is also how many at Griffith Hack also initially heard the news. It was only the next morning that a trading halt was called, and the official announcement published.
While I appreciate the need for confidentiality around price-sensitive announcements in relation to public companies, I do not imagine that too many people would attempt to deny that a stock market scuttlebutt column is a terrible way for employees to learn the details of the acquisition of their employer. While some of the partners and principals of the firms involved so far appear to be in denial about the impact on staff, the murmurs I have been hearing around the traps indicate a fair degree of disgruntlement among employees – particularly those who perhaps envisioned being on a path to equity ownership themselves, and have now seen that future evaporate.
Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!
- The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1
Before You Go…
Thank you for reading this article to the end – I hope you enjoyed it, and found it useful. Almost every article I post here takes a few hours of my time to research and write, and I have never felt the need to ask for anything in return.
But now – for the first, and perhaps only, time – I am asking for a favour. If you are a patent attorney, examiner, or other professional who is experienced in reading and interpreting patent claims, I could really use your help with my PhD research. My project involves applying artificial intelligence to analyse patent claim scope systematically, with the goal of better understanding how different legal and regulatory choices influence the boundaries of patent protection. But I need data to train my models, and that is where you can potentially assist me. If every qualified person who reads this request could spare just a couple of hours over the next few weeks, I could gather all the data I need.
The task itself is straightforward and web-based – I am asking participants to compare pairs of patent claims and evaluate their relative scope, using an online application that I have designed and implemented over the past few months. No special knowledge is required beyond the ability to read and understand patent claims in technical fields with which you are familiar. You might even find it to be fun!
There is more information on the project website, at claimscopeproject.net. In particular, you can read:
- a detailed description of the study, its goals and benefits; and
- instructions for the use of the online claim comparison application.
Thank you for considering this request!
Mark Summerfield
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