Metis Partners  is marketing a patent portfolio of 16 patents and related organisational knowledge which is the key to a potential $1bn plus world market in tiny “eyescreen” displays, combining exceptional colour video images with ultra-low power consumption.
 
These are smaller, lighter and cheaper to run than anything currently on the market and cheaper to manufacture. The company’s own research estimates a head-mounted displays market, both consumer and military of $937m and camera and camcorder market of £200m by 2012.
 
For Metis Partners, founded by accountant, banker, angel investor and former Scottish manager of the London Stock Exchange, Stephen Robertson, the sale is the latest in a string of deals materialising as companies attempt to extract value from intangible as well as tangible assets.
 
Metis specialises in identifying and exploiting for companies the embedded value in IP ranging from formal IP rights such as patents, trademarks and design rights to employee knowledge, organisational knowledge, R&D and corporate brands.
 
This knowledge can be used internally to improve business performance, strategy and profits or externally to create differences from competitors and new niche marketing or business development opportunities.
 
MED collapsed into administration in 2008. It was co-founded by Professor Ian Underwood of Edinburgh University, a scientific adviser to the Scottish Government. AIM-listed for four years, with head office  in Edinburgh and its manufacturing in Germany, it was on the brink of breaking into mass marketing, when the recession hit and dried up credit.
 
Its key technology is based on the discovery that electricity emits light if passed through an organic polymer, enabling it to develop screens using a fraction of the power required by existing small-screen technology.
 
Stephen Robertson points out: “MED won a whole clutch of awards during its existence, including the European Semiconductor Start-Up of the Year. Its technology as well as associations with both Edinburgh and Napier Universities are likely to make its brand and reputation appeal to potential purchasers.”
 
Metis offers advisory, brokerage and due diligence services designed to focus on the ability of a company’s business model and strategy to maximise the return on IP assets and deliver new revenues and profits. Clients include technology and software firms, high-end manufacturers and professional services firms.
 
Metis has recently worked with AMOR Group and Pilgrim Systems plc providing IA and IP strategy advice.  It has provided IP due diligence advice for a major UK bank in advance of its lending to high-growth technology clients and developed strategies to protect and monetise the know-how and IP committed by certain large global corporates into JV’s and IP licenses. 

The company has also partnered with the Glasgow-based Scottish Intellectual Asset Centre winning a series of innovation engagements through Scottish Enterprise’s Innovation Expert Help Framework.

Filling a gap between patent agents and IP lawyers, Robertson’s company is also used by corporate recovery specialists involved in business turnaround and insolvency transactions.
 
In the case of MicroEmissive Displays, Metis is marketing not only the company’s brand and reputation, but domain names, trademarks, licensed-in technology and the crucial patents, giving a buyer the ability to recreate the MED manufacturing capability for a substantial market.
 
It is not only manufacturers who might be in the bidding. Robertson points out, “Big funds in the US specialise in buying up and creating portfolios of patents with a view to litigating against patent infringers or creating revenue out of licensing agreements using the underlying technology.”