Profiles in Innovation
Entrepreneurs on the Cutting Edge of Technology
Tribeka Ltd |
Key Facts:
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| “Patents provide SMEs like Tribeka the security to create award winning innovations and new jobs for the citizens of Europe.” |
Daniel Doll-Steinberg
London, UK
What if Your Favorite Store Always Had Every Item You Ever Wanted in Stock?
My company, Tribeka Ltd, is revolutionizing the way people buy and sell software. With our technology a customer can walk into any store, choose from a potentially unlimited range of software, and walk away with a secure, up-to-date, boxed copy that was licensed and manufactured in under four minutes. Our SoftWide™ technology is already used to sell thousands of retail titles through “A World of Software” high-street stores and recently won two of the Wall Street Journal Europe’s Innovation Awards.
Our Technology Will Allow the Retail Software Market to Reach a Whole New Consumer
SoftWide eliminates logistics, warehousing, and stock while providing an identical product at a fraction of the cost. Ours is an example of disruptive technology—it will allow the retail software market to explode by overcoming the stranglehold of inventory and making a full range of software available to High Street consumers.
SoftWide will also attract a new market segment: the 80% of computer owners who do not know that consumer software exists and/or do not purchase software. By appealing to this customer by offering life-improving software in a familiar and service-oriented environment, Tribeka hopes to significantly alter and expand the sales and use of software and computers. As the computer becomes the center of the digital home SoftWide will ensure the software market expands to its fullest potential through retail outlets dedicated to presenting and always having available the right software for everyone—time and time again.
Patents Gave Us the Confidence to Grow
Patenting our innovation early in the process gave our investors a higher level of confidence in our ability to monetize on SoftWide, and helped us to draw in high-level partners to offer products for PCs, Pocket PCs, and phones. And as we anticipated a certain amount of growth as a result of new partners and increased funding, an additional effect of the patents was our ability to recruit and employ additional creative, innovative staff. We also plan to license the SoftWide technology to retail partners outside the UK.
The cost of patenting our innovations was not large, especially given the collateral benefits we realized because of our patents (investor and partner confidence, increased staff, and eventual licensing revenue). In our case, the total patent costs have been about 2.5% of R&D costs.
Tribeka started work on SoftWide™ in 1998, and we now operate a growing chain of software stores in the UK. Our partners are 150 leading publishers like Eidos, McAfee, Sage, SCi, and Webroot.
Lessons Learned
By protecting our Intellectual Property Tribeka gave investors the confidence they needed to and our company. Their investment enabled us to hire the staff necessary to finish developing our technology and bring this innovation to market. Patents and other IP protections provide SMEs like Tribeka the security to create award winning innovations and new jobs for the citizens of Europe. Without them, we would not have been able to make SoftWide or our successful “A World of Software” stores a reality.
About Profiles in Innovation and ACT
The Profiles in Innovation project is designed to highlight entrepreneurs who are driving technological innovation around the world and the critical role that patents and IP play in their success. While large multinationals often get the credit, small businesses are at the center of the innovation economy. For these small innovators, patents are critical to their ability to protect their innovations while building partnerships and raising capital.
The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) is an international trade association for the information technology industry that is dedicated to protecting small business innovation. ACT has more than 3,000 member companies around the world, most of which are small and mid-size technology firms.
Tags: Europe, North America
