Patent and trademark sales, licensing structures, and enforcement — for venture-backed companies winding down, and for healthy companies with idle IP on their balance sheet.
Most venture-backed companies have real IP value — patents that mean something to a strategic, trademarks that anchor a category, source code that compresses development time for the right buyer. Most also have no infrastructure to monetize it. Inside Trademarkia, we have the largest IP-monetization platform in the United States. We use it.
Trademarkia, our parent, has filed trademarks for 125,000+ clients in 80+ countries over the past 15 years. PatentVC, our sister practice, runs U.S. and international patent prosecution alongside enforcement and litigation. Graveyard.vc IP Monetization is built on top of that infrastructure — not on top of a rolodex.
Trained on Trademarkia's IP transaction data plus USPTO assignment records and comparable-sale data. We anchor on what comparable patents and brands have actually sold for — not on a wishful spreadsheet.
Our buyer universe for IP is wider than for whole-company sales. Strategic acquirers, defensive aggregators, non-practicing entities, sovereign IP funds, and license-only counterparties — each segment has different value drivers, different deal structures, and different timelines. We map them all.
PatentVC's litigation team is available for IP-monetization engagements where enforcement is part of the path to value. Federal litigation, ITC proceedings, and inter partes review — handled by litigators who write 40+ patents a year and try them in court.
Two-week portfolio audit: every patent, trademark, copyright, and material trade secret. The Valuation Engine produces a per-asset value range and a portfolio-level recommendation: which assets to sell as a bundle, which to license, which to enforce, and which to abandon.
Based on portfolio, situation, and timeline, we structure the right market: full-portfolio sale, technology-vertical carve-out, defensive license to a strategic, NPE-style assignment with retained royalties, or enforcement-led licensing. Each path has different math; we model them all before we pick.
The Buyer Graph generates the targeted outreach list. NDAs, technical-diligence support, term-sheet negotiation, and definitive-agreement drafting handled in coordination with the client's counsel. We close the highest-probability path on the agreed timeline.
Patent assignments recorded with USPTO and foreign offices via Trademarkia infrastructure. Trademark assignments perfected and recorded. License-payment streams administered on the Live Ledger if retained. Royalty audits handled where applicable.
Wind-down clients. Companies running an ABC, an Article 9 sale, or a managed liquidation where IP is the highest-value asset. The IP-monetization workstream runs concurrently with the wind-down — and frequently produces the largest single distribution to creditors.
Healthy clients with idle IP. Many venture-backed companies acquire IP that they never commercialize: patents from a pivot, trademarks from an abandoned product line, source code from an internal tool. Idle IP is not free — it costs maintenance fees, renewal fees, and management attention. A structured monetization can convert idle assets into real revenue without any wind-down dynamics.
Outright sale. Patents and trademarks transferred to a strategic buyer, defensive aggregator, or specialty IP fund for a one-time payment. Cleanest outcome; highest immediate cash; gives up future upside.
License (exclusive or non-exclusive). The original owner retains title; the licensee receives defined rights for defined consideration — typically a combination of up-front fee, milestone payments, and ongoing royalty. Better for portfolios with multi-vertical applicability.
Sale-with-retained-royalty. Title transfers, but the original owner retains a royalty stream tied to the buyer's monetization. Common for NPE-style assignments where the buyer specializes in licensing or enforcement and the seller wants downside protection plus upside participation.
Some IP portfolios are valuable but illiquid: the patents are clearly being practiced by major industry participants, but no one is willing to pay for a license without facing real legal pressure. PatentVC's federal-litigation practice handles these engagements. Patents authored or invented by Raj Abhyanker have been licensed or sold for over $1 billion. When a portfolio requires teeth, we have them in-house.
Different IP situations call for different fee structures. Most portfolio sales work cleanly on the engagement-fee-plus-bonus model. Enforcement engagements are typically structured on contingent or hybrid arrangements through PatentVC.
Graveyard.vc was founded by Raj Abhyanker, who grew up in a family retail business in Phoenix and finished college and law school only after that family business wound down. He has launched dozens of companies since — and built this practice around the conviction that founders facing a wind-down deserve someone who has lived both sides of it. Read Raj's full bio →