Dot Hill Systems Signs Brokerage Agreement With ipCapital

Dot Hill Systems Corporation and ipCapital Group (ipCG), an IP consulting firm, announced a collaboration to evaluate strategic alternatives for Dot Hill’s patent portfolio consisting of 79 patents and 23 patents pending covering data storage, storage software, servers and connectivity.

On September 9, 2011 ipCG has again updated its assessment of Dot Hill’s patent portfolio, which it first completed in November 2010 and subsequently updated in February 2011 in which it compared Dot Hill’s patents to those of 15 other data storage companies using ipCG’s proprietary assessment methodologies.  

ipCG again concluded that the average strength of Dot Hill’s patents was the strongest in this group, that Dot Hill leads this group in terms of patent generation (defined as the number of patents owned relative to revenues) and that despite its lower revenue in comparison to most of those companies, Dot Hill had the 6th highest number of data storage related patents within this group.

In August 2011, ipCG and Dot Hill entered into a brokerage and consulting agreement in which ipCG will work with Dot Hill’s executive management, engineers and patent counsel to advise them on alternative monetization options for Dot Hill’s patents. The overarching goal of this agreement is to optimize the value of Dot Hill’s patent portfolio.

"We are excited about extending our relationship with ipCG into the next phase on the basis of our recent brokerage agreement," stated Dana Kammersgard, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dot Hill Systems. "We are now evaluating strategies that could yield meaningful economic value.  As part of this process we intend to identify and reserve those patents that we believe are core to existing products and future roadmaps and underpin the value proposition we bring to our OEM and channel partners. For certain other patents that are not fundamental to Dot Hill’s product roadmap, we will actively consider alternative monetization options, including outright sale and mutually beneficial licensing arrangements."

"Storing information is no longer discretionary and the amount of data that will be stored in corporations, governments and homes will grow astronomically over the coming few years," remarked John Cronin, Managing Director and Chairman of ipCG. "We believe Dot Hill has some very unique and valuable patents that could significantly improve how quickly, how reliably and how efficiently we will save and protect the growing amount of information resident in data centers, clouds and home-based storage systems. Given the growing interest in patent acquisition and licensing, we are confident that these patent rights could potentially drive significant value for Dot Hill’s shareholders."