Exclusive: Walden Riverwood leads funding in intellectual property manager Clairvolex

Intellectual property (IP) manager Clairvolex has raised $3.5 million (Rs 24 crore at current exchange rate) in the second tranche of Series B funding round led by California-headquartered Walden Riverwood Capital and joined by Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm IndusAge Partners -- both existing investors.

The fresh funds will be majorly invested in deepening the market penetration and sales of Clairvolex’s new product Leap-IP, an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled platform, across the US and Europe, the company said in a statement.

Run by Clairvolex Knowledge Processes Pvt. Ltd, the company is also looking at adding more data science and data engineering capabilities in both Bengaluru and Los Altos centres.

“Patent management and monetisation is a $180 billion market globally. We developed our AI-enabled tech platform, Leap-IP, based on more than a decade of our experience managing patent portfolios. Leap-IP is currently being deployed for several large patent holders based in the US and Europe,” Manoj Pillai, chief executive officer of Clairvolex, said.

Leap-IP offers patent development and monetisation capabilities to companies. According to the company,  Leap-IP’s databases have access to over 12 million patent data records at the backend, more than 30,000 IP-specific rules and at least 130 automated standard operating procedures supported by natural language processing algorithms to streamline patent prosecution. The solution offers real-time insights to advise companies on developing and keeping only valuable patents while optimising the rest.

Pillai said the company is aiming to manage 10-15% of patents belonging to top 50 tech IP owners by 2025.

In its first Series B tranche, the company had raised $8 million in 2016 from Walden and IndusAge, primarily to build and launch Leap-IP.

Founded in 2007 by Pillai, Clairvolex is a pure-play IP management firm.

In November 2015, Clairvolex raised $4 million in its Series A funding led by IndusAge. Anaqua Inc., a Boston-based intellectual asset management software company, also participated in the round.

Previously, the company received its seed funding in 2007 from LexOrbis, an intellectual property law firm based in New Delhi, and secured angel funding from Singapore-based investors in 2011.

Clairvolex’s client base includes General Electric, Ericsson, Philips, Amazon and Qualcomm.