Stephen Krouzecky undertook a whirlwind visit of some major cities on his way back from Toronto and had various meetings with existing and potential US associates and clients in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles.

Of interest was the time he spent in Silicon Valley, helping establish strategic alliances with US IP attorney and IP commercialisation firms, the latter being of interest to our alliance partner KPI Synergies Pty Ltd, which specialises in IP commercialisation strategy. He was able to meet one of our new clients in the Bay area and attend the NXP Connects event in Santa Clara held on 13 and 14 June 2018.

NXP are a global semiconductor manufacturer, which involved Phillips Semiconductor and Freescale Semiconductor. Recently it was the subject of a takeover bid by Qualcomm, but due to problems with the Chinese merger authority, this was effectively cancelled on 26 July 2018.

The event was huge and included presentations on cutting-edge technology in the following areas: automotive including driverless vehicles and integrated services, artificial intelligence, enabling technologies, security and solutions, smart machinery and industrial automation, smart networks and computing, smarter world solutions and multimode connectivity, and emerging trends in innovation.

Stephen was also able to attend a pitch day for Russian start-ups called Global Pitch Russia, staged by Fort Ross Ventures, a venture capital firm connecting US technology start-ups to the Russian market. This was a unique event introducing Russia’s brightest technology start-ups to Silicon Valley investors, where 25 of Russia’s most promising early-stage companies presented 3 to 5 minute pitches to an enthusiastic audience in the categories of virtual reality/augmented reality, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and cloud computing.

Of interest was the distinct lack of intellectual property preparedness of these companies for entering the US market, where Stephen was able to generate great interest in his services, albeit coming from Australia. In fact, we are hoping to pick up some clients from the event to assist them in their IP endeavours.

If you are interested in any of the above and would like more detail, please do not hesitate to contact us as we can offer an extensive amount of information on any of the topics referred to here.