IPSphere

Most companies need capital to scale, grow and sometimes survive at some point. Yet when seeking finance, few companies tap into one of their most valuable assets, their intellectual property - WIPO (2022)

Intellectual Property (IP) represents a significant yet often undervalued asset for most enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and many other IP owners face significant hurdles in securing financing for their IP, as traditional IP financing channels like banks often overlook them due to their lack of tangible assets & perceived risk profile. High transaction costs charged by middlemen makes it more difficult to successfully negotiate licenses and agreements.

Despite the challenges, the demand for IP financing among SMEs is substantial and growing. SMEs account for over 60% of global IP filings, and over 70% of SMEs perceive a lack of access to IP financing as a major obstacle to their growth.

IPSphere, a decentralized non-custodial financial platform specifically tailored for IP NFTs, solves this problem by empowering SMEs and IP owners with easy access to IP-backed finance and a global marketplace for IP sales & legal services such as IP Valuations & client consultations.

IP-backed finance as a market has seen a great surge since the 2000s, currently sitting at an annual transaction volume of~ $20 billion and expected to maintain its growth trajectory. The global IP-backed financing market is relatively nascent, and there is a significant unmet demand for financing solutions that utilize IP as collateral. Estimates of the unmet annual volume demand for IP backed financing vary widely, but most experts agree that it is substantial.

IPSphere achieves this goal by tokenizing the IP as an NFT following a legal IP Valuation process. Post valuation, the details are shared on the IP Data and IP owners can avail their IP for loans or acquisitions, which is achieved by NFT lending.

A few clicks on IPSphere provides a global IP platform for:

i. IP holders, who can take instant & bespoke loans against their intangible assets. ii. IP buyers, who are looking to acquire IP assets originating from across the world. iii. IP sellers, who are looking for global & liquid IP markets to sell their intangibles. iv. Liquidity providers, who wish to earn interest on their capital by providing loans. v. Law firms, who can provide IP valuation and other services to a global IP community.

Relevant Data & Stats:

a. As per WIPO, the global market for IP-intensive industries is expected to reach $12.5 trillion by 2030, although the current level is far below this. b. SMEs accounted for 42% of all patent applications filed in Europe in 2021. c. Global funding gap for IP-backed financing is estimated to be ~ $20-30 billion. d. Number of IP backed financing deals increased by 20% in 2022. e. The average deal size for IP backed financing is $10 million.

This project has a NextJS and TailwindCSS frontend, with a MVC-based backend. We integrate Web3Auth for wallet login and Chainlink CCIP & Functions to mint cross-chain IP NFTs and make decentralized backend-blockchain data transfers for the IP Valuation Oracle. Using Web3Auth makes it easier to bring non-degen web3 users onchain, as it simplifies the wallet experience greatly.