IDT’s IP Portfolio is Readyfor Anything

case study

Name:Integrated Device Technologies

Ticker:NASDAQ: IDTI

Industry:Semiconductors

Operations: Communications, computing,and power management

Revenue:$728.2M (fiscal 2017)

Customer since: 2016

“I only wish we had changed to IPfolio sooner.”

- BRUCE ELDER DIRECTOR OF IP AND LICENSING INTEGRATED DEVICE TECHNOLOGIES (IDT)

A F L E X I B L E I P M A N A G E M E N T S Y S T E M I S Y O U RF R I E N D W H E N T H E W O R L D I S Y O U R O Y S T E R

A former startup CEO, Bruce Elder’s IP management philosophy focuses on improving the value of business assets and helping the company secure its sources of revenue and generate more net income. IPfolio is helping him achieve both while executing Integrated Device Technologies’ global strategy.

A C O M PA N Y W I T H A G L O B A L P E R S P E C T I V E

Integrated Device Technologies (IDT) has over 1,500 employees, more than 1,000 patents, and a two-and-a-half person department to manage and protect them (and its other IP assets). Inventions developed in its multiple worldwide design centers are commercialized in end products from wireless telecommunication basestations and cloud datacenters, to mobile phones and increasingly, autonomous vehicles. As its three principal sectors – communications and computing infrastructure; automotive and industrial automation, and mobile devices – span the globe, IDT’s IP program has a necessarily global perspective.

U S I N G I P T O I N C R E A S E T H E V A L U E O F B U S I N E S SA S S E T S

Director of IP and Licensing Bruce Elder is in charge of planning and executing IDT’s IP program. His IP resume and past experience as a startup CEO shape how he thinks patents and trademarks can contribute to a company.

Elder acknowledges that portfolio visibility – really understanding its components – “is pretty basic stuff,” yet few companies do it well. His first challenge upon arrival in 2014 at IDT’s San Jose, CA headquarters was that no one knew what IDT had. The relationship of patents to a particular product line or equally critically, the relationship of the patents to the competitive landscape were a mystery. The incumbent patent management system was more of an impediment than resource to solving it.

IPfolio Corporation | 2600 Tenth St #635, Berkeley, CA 94710 | 510-982-1421

“I believe the role of IP is to increase the value of your business assets. Unfortunately, IP is a vague concept to most people, including the executive suite, who often look at it as a cost. My approach then is to focus IP on asset value accretion while generating more net income. The key is leveraging your IP assets, which begins with knowing what you have to leverage. If you don’t, you can’t take the appropriate action.”

“Our old system was almost impossible to change. The code was old and inflexible. Every time we wanted to change how we were doing business or how we were analyzing our patent portfolio, it would take great expense and a great deal of time to make the change. It was very slow and cumbersome to update and the result was oftentimes bugs.”

IDT’s ZMID520x sensor family consists of three high-performance inductive position sensors that are integrated into vehicles, robots, home appliances and smart automation products.

W A N T E D : A N E W I P M A N A G E M E N T S Y S T E M W I T HP O W E R A N D F L E X I B I L I T Y

“You’ve got to know what you have got and where you have gaps and plan for that.”

What Elder needed was a system that would provide extensive value over time. His initial goal was to organize IDT’s portfolio by mapping it against IDT’s products, market differentiation, competitors and regional markets. Beyond this, he wanted a management system that would continue to provide the flexibility he needed to adapt to whatever challenges his global activities encountered. Like many IP leaders in the Silicon Valley, he found the solution to be IPfolio.

O U T W I T H T H E O L D : R E P L A C I N G F R U S T R AT I O N

Replacing the incumbent system with IPfolio enabled Elder to accurately map the scope of his patent coverage against IDT’s products and service, and plot sources of current revenues and future growth against their portfolio protection. His early analysis was an educational surprise;

C L O U D - B A S E D F L E X I B I L I T Y

“With IPfolio based on the Salesforce platform, the software is easy to change and easily adaptable for our business needs now and in the future. Many of the product decisions have been IP management home runs, especially offering extensive front-end configuration tools that make getting started so much easier. Other tools, such as PAIR Sync, are ensuring that our patent data integrity remains very high.”

Elder dramatically improved IDT’s portfolio management in the following year, taking advantage of IPfolio’s Salesforce foundation, its flexibility and the many integrations with third-party services and data sources.

IPfolio Corporation | 2600 Tenth St #635, Berkeley, CA 94710 | 510-982-1421

“I categorized our patents into different technology families and was quite surprised with the results; many of our patents protected products that were no longer important in terms of revenue generation. Products that were driving revenue were insufficiently protected. What we obviously needed was to refocus our IP strategy and activities to better align them with how we were then making money and how we expected to make money in the future.”

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T H E P L AT F O R M T O H A N D L E G L O B A L C H A N G E

Elder thinks flexibility is undervalued by people shopping for an IP management system because they forget that change is inevitable and processes will have to be updated. In fact, inflexibility was a key reason he replaced his legacy patent management system.

“I really am not surprised that IPfolio is doing so well against competitors that have been around for much longer. Whenever I’m asked by someone considering replacing their current IP system or starting from scratch, I recommend IPfolio, particularly if it’s intended to support a global portfolio.”