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Tech, Media & Telecom

Ideahub to launch new platform for individual investors of patents in Q1

The mid-sized company boasts over 3,000 patents in communications, next-generation video codec, wireless internet and IoT

By Jan 03, 2023 (Gmt+09:00)

2 Min read

Ideahub’s Founder and CEO Im Kyeong-su
Ideahub’s Founder and CEO Im Kyeong-su



In the next three months, South Korea's Ideahub is poised to launch a platform on which individual investors can also invest in patents.

If all goes as planned, the new platform will be the first of its kind in the world.

In an interview with The Korea Economic Daily, Ideahub Founder and CEO Im Kyeong-su said he founded the company in 2016 after witnessing many competitive patents that never saw the light of the day. 

Lim boasts nearly three decades of experience in the intellectual property and licensing sector, most notably at LG Electronics Inc.’s Intellectual Property Center.

According to the company’s website, he has successfully completed over 100 patent acquisition deals and generated over $150 million in patent licensing revenues.

Lee earned his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Yonsei University and a Juris Doctorate from Yonsei and George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

The company acquires rights to patents from small and mid-sized companies, research institutes, and universities in South Korea. After such an acquisition, the company will expand on the patent applications or bolster the technological development to receive patent royalties, or payments made by the licensee to the licensor for the use of the patent. 

In 2020 alone, Ideahub acquired some 1,400 patents from mobile phone maker Pantech Inc. All in all, it has more than 3,000 patents in communications, next-generation video codec, wireless internet, streaming, and the Internet of Things. 

It acquired some 500 patents from the United States last year. 

A whopping 90% of its revenue comes from overseas conglomerates such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Meta Platforms, Inc., and Sony Group Corp. 

All monetization comes from patent royalties. 

Online streaming service providers are also offering patent royalties on real-time streaming. Elon Musk-owned Tesla, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz also pay royalties to Ideahub for in-car communications modules. 

The company’s revenue jumped 56.1% year-on-year in 2022 to reach 52 billion won ($41 million). Based on the figure, Ideahub is Asia's largest private IP company. 

A screenshot of the Ideahub website 
A screenshot of the Ideahub website 



Lim expects the use of patents for the IoT market to exponentially grow in the future on the back of digital transformation across various sectors. Most notably, the company has WiFi 6 technology, officially known as IEEE 802.11ax. 

The company is forecasting a 34.6% jump in revenue this year. 

“While South Korea is the third largest holder of patents only after the US and Japan, they are not being used widely to record losses for consecutive years,” said Lim. 

Write to Dae-Kyu Ahn at powerzanic@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.

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