Article One Partners is Startup 2009 ‘Startup of the Year’
By Anna Johnson on June 10th, 2009Article One Partners has taken top honors at the Startup 2009 conference held last week.
A panel of venture capitalist judges deemed Article One Partners, which runs a global community that uses crowdsourcing to research patent validity, the 2009 Startup of the Year.
Startup 2009 was co-hosted by Silicon Alley Insider and New York University’s Stern School of Business, with support from founding sponsor General Catalyst Partners.
Speakers at the conference included Mahalo co-founder and CEO, Jason Calacanis, Federated Media founder and chairman, John Battelle, and Facebook co-founder and General Catalyst entrepreneur in residence, Chris Hughes.
Article One Partners has a rather interesting business model. It monetarily incentivizes a community of Article One Advisors to seek out evidence of prior art which can, in turn, be used to discredit or validate a given patent.
If Article One forms an opinion that patents are invalid, Advisors earn up to $50,000. Advisors who actively build the community also earn premium compensation in a profit sharing plan, which distributes approximately five percent of Article One’s net annual profit.
For its part, Article One Partners seems to make money by selling its patent research, either to someone seeking to validate, or invalidate, a patent.
For more information about Article One Partners visit: Articleonepartners.com
To watch streaming video of the Startup 2009 conference, visit Startup 2009
