Patents have a maximum life of 20 years and, therefore, a 20-year potential monopoly. Patents that are just beginning their life and which have longer to run on the their potential monopoly position understandably will have more value. It is rare that a patent nearing the end of its term will cause a great threat to its competitors. It is almost certain that they will have devised technologies or products of their own by then that will not interfere with the patent owners monopoly position. In addition, one has to take into consideration the potential business life of a patent, i.e., the duration, which a patent is likely to be economically useful, if other subsequent patents are providing better alternatives to it.

IP Street is driving the innovation economy by delivering actionable business intelligence from patent documents. IP Street empowers users to Discover, Measure, Compare, and Connect to business opportunities. Designed for inventors, IP counselors, strategists, executives, investors, and analysts, the features of IP Street's cutting edge technologies simplify the complexities of intellectual property into intuitive and meaningful graphical summaries. These visualizations provide the essential "due diligence" to allow users to effectively evaluate business questions. IP Street helps you better understand patent search, patent analytics, patent value, patent infringement and how to patent an idea. Our patent search services will provide patent analytics that will revolutionize your business strategy by helping you determine the value of a patent business intelligence from an IP lens. The company is headquartered in Spokane, Washington, with a development office in Seattle. More information is available at www.IPStreet.com.

During development, IP Street was very fortunate and grateful to have early partners that signed on to use our tools, often in beta form. Through timely and constructive feedback, our partners were instrumental in helping us develop features that evolved from "interesting and cool" to "nice to have" to "got to have". Below is a sampling of some of the enterprise partners who understood our vision very early on. They became annual subscribers and were afforded the benefits of having direct access to our development team, enabling us to design more relevant tools and allowing them to enjoy influence in design priorities. They include: Alibaba, Amazon, Lee & Hayes, PAML, T-Mobile. Thank you to all of our enterprise partners.

Most of our competitors emphasize the importance of "deep 'prior art' searches." In their efforts to show you how technically capable they are, they seem to forget the importance of returning results that (1) are interpretable, (2) have practical meaning, and (3) are transparently sophisticated. Our promise to you is that we will continue to focus on the types of questions you need answered and will improve our patent search tools based on your needs. At IPstreet.com, we use a very sophisticated search technology called "Concept Searching" that allows you to enter a lengthy description of your invention, product, or idea, and compare it to the universe of granted patents and patent applications in the United States using data from the USPTO. Using our patent analytic search tools, we offer you patent analytics software that is sophisticated, transparent, and meaningful results. Our patent search tools are top of the line. We understand patent searches are important when answering the questions, is my idea patentable, how to patent an idea and what is the best patent search service available?

Ignorance is not bliss. Before any significant moneys are spent on R&D or Product Development, a basic FTO (freedom to operate) search you be performed to ensure the idea, technology, or product is not infringing the IP rights of another party. IPstreet.com's search tools will help you avoid third-party infringement.