Week 8: Uber's IPs

In this post, I am going to discuss the IP portfolio of Uber Technologies.

(a) How many patents (issued and/or pending, US and/or foreign) do we have in our IP portfolio at this time?

As Efrat and Lynn pointed out in the article, Unicorns do not enough patents, but Uber has significantly increased its US patent portfolio in recent months, in part from acquisitions, as well as organic patenting efforts. Uber currently owns 34 US patents, with 29 utility patents and 6 design patents. Here is a graphical representation of Uber's IP portfolio:

(b) Identify three of our main competitors in the market.  How is their IP position compared to ours? What are the risks of our competitors having a better IP position that ours?

I am going to look at Uber's competition worldwide and not just in the US:

1) Lyft (USA): 2 patents 

2) Ola Cabs (India)

3)  Didi Kuaidi (China)- Also in Top 5 of Fortune's Unicorn list

 I could not find information on Ola and Didi since they are internationally owned companies. To better understand the patent situation of Ola cabs, I made a call to my hometown in India- I found out that they own 0 patents. This is interesting because Ola Cabs has 20 times the marketshare of Uber (4%) in India.  

Since most of the ridesharing companies have similar service model, there is high likelihood of having very similar features and even technologies. If a competitor has a better IP position than ours, there is high likelihood that we could be infringing on its patents and could end up in a patent litigation case. With this, we will not only take a hit on our finances but also on public relations. 

However, in the service industries that are highly localized, it might be more difficult for companies like Uber to sue companies like Ola in India. 

(c) What can we do to bolster our IP portfolio - what are some sources of patents that we can go to, and what are the types of transactions that we can engage in to bring those patents in? 

To bolster our IP portfolio, we could research some defunct ride-sharing companies that hold patents and buy from them. Some examples are RideCell and RelayRide. We could absorb these defunct companies in their entirety as well. 

There has been a lingering patent owned by GM that seems to be a threat to Uber. Uber should look into the patent, and if it is infringing on the patent, it should try to license it from GM. If Uber has the financial capabilities, it may even want to buy the patent off. GM has recently made a deal with Lyft on self-driving cars, so Lyft may be exempt from a patent litigation, which poses serious threat to Uber. GM bought these patents from Sidecar, an early competitor of Uber and Lyft.