For Patexia, a company founded in 2010, the California-based business is all about bringing efficiency and transparency to the intellectual property (IP) world and creating a meeting place for science, technology and business.

“By using the power of crowd sourcing, technology and information, our mission is to bring more transparency and information to the intellectual property world,” Patexia Founder and CEO Pedram Sameni told TMCnet today at ITEXPO (News - Alert). “The number of patent litigation has grown a lot. In fact, last year there were over 6,000 patent litigations in U.S. This year, that number is expected to grow to 7,000 and it’s because the legal and the tech worlds are not on the same page. There are lots of poor patents out there.”

Patexia serves as an online platform that connects corporations to more than 7,000 subject matter experts who help them assess their IP portfolios. A chief reason Patexia is establishing such a strong foothold in its respected space is because today, intangibles—or intellectual property—make up a large portion of total company market value.

In fact, the IP landscape has changed considerably over the past 30 years. Back in the 80s, for example, the ratio of tangible assets to intangible ones was 20 to 80 percent. Fast forward to 2013 and that ratio has reversed, and 80 percent of market value is intangible, according to Sameni.

Patexia is uniquely qualified to meet this changing ratio by helping corporations better assess, manage and monetize their IP portfolios. The company’s crowd sourcing platform—boasting experts in a variety of fields from telecom to VoIP to electrical engineering—provides a superior method of assessing IP, promoting efficiency and drives innovation.

“What makes us unique is that the traditional model is based on a single person,” Sameni said. “We are bridging that gap by leveraging the crowd source model, but crowd sourcing to a subject expert community—people who have the right background.”

Earlier today, Sameni joined a group of panelists for a presentation at ITEXPO’s SUITS Conference, launched to advance the knowledge of telecommunications innovators, including developers, implementers, licensees, licensors, end users, carriers and enterprise patent holders. Sameni’s session titled “Patents and Licensing: How to Develop Licensing and Monetization Models” shed light on successful models for developing and licensing patent monetization.

Most recently, Patexia demonstrated its commitment to improving the patent system by announcing a new crowdsourced prior art search contest on a patent for a user interface experience. Community members had the opportunity to submit relevant prior art findings that helped invalidate the key claims of the patent, via a contest format, and had the potential to earn up to $5,000 for their research as a contest prize.

Since its inception, Patexia has awarded thousands of dollars in prizes to its subject matter experts for their efforts in both prior art, innovation, and commercial use studies.

So what’s next for the IP-focused company?

“In the next couple of years, we will see patent litigation go down because it’s too costly and companies will find a low cost option,” Sameni explained, “and that’s where our model will be useful.”