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An LFJ Conversation with Harish Daiya

By John Freund |

Harish Daiya is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Lumenci. He is based out of Austin, Texas and oversees the company’s operation across all global offices. With over 15 years of industry experience in technical consulting in IP litigation and licensing, Harish has been a part of $2B+ in IP value creation.

Harish is also a member of the Forbes Business Council, where he regularly writes Thought Leadership pieces and shares ideas on global impact. Harish has also been a serial entrepreneur and angel investor for several successful startups. As the CEO, Harish is elemental in driving Lumenci’s vision, goals, sales, and revenue. He oversees organizational growth, business strategy, people culture, client relationships, business development, strategic partnerships, and launching new businesses.
 
Below is our LFJ Conversation with Harish Daiya:
 
Lumenci is a full-service technology consulting firm that uses domain expertise and automation to create value from technical innovations. Can you unpack that for us?
 

At Lumenci, we provide turnkey solutions to generate value from patent assets. What started as a technical consulting team has, over time, evolved into a team of like-minded experts, engineers, and deal makers who find innovative ways to commercialize the value of the patents. 

We frequently engage with deep-tech companies (and their investors) with sizeable patent portfolios that want to understand and estimate the value of their patents, which requires thoroughly examining their patent portfolio, deep diving into the invention/inventor story, and identifying assets that can generate maximum returns. This could also mean assisting the client in developing patents and selecting the best out of the lot for monetization. Our analysis and strategies to customers drive tangible value out of intangible assets, with more tech companies becoming more aware of the value of intellectual property. Our global clientele is now expanding with more requirements on the ‘how’ than the ‘what.’  

How does Lumenci help patent owners, law firms, and litigation funders during IP litigation?

Lumenci has supported AMLaw100 law firms in over 175 patent litigation matters, on both plaintiff and defense, across the US, EU, China, India, and Brazil, and has helped generate over $3B in verdicts, settlements, licensing revenues, and cost savings. Our team has successfully represented as technology consultants in high-stakes patent litigation lifecycle in creating high-quality litigation grade claim charts, drafting complaints, investigating confidential source code under the protective order, documentation review, expert reports prep, and supporting our law firm customers during deposition and trial.

Lumenci’s vast experience of supporting multiple high-stakes cases through the trial is beneficial to patent owners in not only validating the merits of a patent portfolio from a technology and valuation standpoint but also getting a turnkey solution to craft the right story, raise capital via litigation funding or insurance, engage with law firms, and get insights throughout the commercialization lifecycle. 

Our experts advise litigation funders with in-depth technology and valuation due diligence and help them identify the risks of a potential investment. Our experience with litigation funders has yielded them to mitigate high investment risks by identifying the underlying potential of patent assets, the risk of a commercialization campaign, and strategies on how to mitigate them. 

What is the role of due diligence and technical analysis in the patent litigation lifecycle?

Foundational, to sum it up in a word. 

Lumenci conducts due diligence on the company’s patent assets, highlighting relevance w.r.t technology evolution, assessing validity w.r.t section patentable subject matter, novelty and obviousness, scoping enforceability across the industry, and outlining the damages potential. This process becomes integral to the initial stages of a patent commercialization process. In addition, venue consideration is an important aspect of the diligence.  This due diligence forms the basis of building infallible evidence, which is critical in supporting a high-stakes commercialization campaign. 

How does the technical analysis process work? Are you able to analyze any technical domain?

We support high-stakes patent commercializing and litigation campaigns from day 1 through trial and specialize in technology domains like Software, Telecom/Networking, Semiconductors, and Medical Devices.  We support our law firm customers in maintaining and constantly upgrading the state of infringement or non-infringement evidence, and validity or invalidity evidence as a case progresses by analyzing source code, reverse engineering hardware, testing prior art systems, and conducting complex testing of telecom/networking devices. Lumenci is well known in the industry for “illuminating innovation”, i.e. finding key pieces of evidence which can be material in affecting the outcome of a case, on both the plaintiff and defense side.

What trends are you seeing in the patent space that is relevant to litigation funders specifically, and how does Lumenci’s service fit into those trends?

As litigation costs, especially in the US, continue to increase, the level of pre-intake diligence by the litigation funders also continues to increase. For the funders, this means having access to or relationships with technical and damages diligence teams that can provide priority and prompt support to their diligence needs is essential. The litigation funders that have these relationships ironed can out-compete their peers in terms of speed and depth of decision-making. Lumenci with its trained teams in various parts of the patent monetization and litigation cycle in over 10 countries, offers this depth and speed that is virtually unmatched at scale.

Despite the rising interest rates and dire macroeconomic conditions, the growing number of litigation cases and the emerging secondary market for litigation finance claims highlight the pertinence of litigation funding. Litigation funders are particularly interested in understanding the underlying potential of patent assets and mitigation potential before investing in a case. Additionally, operating technology companies continue to find creative ways to generate revenue and many patent assets are coming to the market which have little to no diligence done on them. Lumenci’s in-depth expertise in technical due diligence, validity assessment, damages assessment, and experience in handling high-stakes patent litigation matters are highly valued by litigation funders and insurance underwriters in making informed decisions on their investments in patent asset commercialization campaigns.

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ALFA Welcomes Mackay Chapman as Newest Associate Member

By Harry Moran |

In a post on LinkedIn, The Association of Litigation Funders of Australia (ALFA) announced that it is welcoming Mackay Chapman as its newest Associate Member. Mackay Chapman becomes the 12th Associate Member of ALFA, following the inclusion of Litica in April of this year.

Mackay Chapman is a boutique legal and advisory firm, specialising in high-stakes regulatory, financial services and insolvency disputes. The Melbourne-based law firm was founded in 2016 by Dan Maclay and Michael Chapman, who bring 25 years of experience in complex disputes to the business.More information about Mackay Chapman can be found on its website.

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Deminor Announces Settlement in Danish OW Bunker Case

By Harry Moran |

An announcement from Deminor Litigation Funding revealed that a settlement has been reached in the OW Bunker action in Demark, which Deminor funded litigation brought by a group of 20 institutional investors against the investment banks Carnegie and Morgan Stanley.

This is part of a wider group of actions originating from OW Bunker’s 2014 bankruptcy, which led to significant financial losses for both company creditors and shareholders who had invested in the company. These other cases were brought against several defendants, including OW Bunker and its former management and Board of Directors, Altor Fund II, and the aforementioned investment banks.

The settlement provides compensation for plaintiffs across the four legal actions, with a total value of approximately 645 million DKK, including legal costs. The settlement agreement requires the parties to ‘waive any further claims against each other relating to OW Bunker’. Deminor’s announcement makes clear that ‘none of the defendants have acknowledged any legal responsibility in the group of linked cases in connection with the settlement.’

Charles Demoulin, Chief Investment Officer of Deminor, said that “the settlement makes it possible for our clients to benefit from a reasonable compensation for their losses”, and that they were advising the client “to accept this solution which represents a better alternative to continuing the litigation with the resulting uncertainties.” Joeri Klein, General Counsel Netherlands and Co-head Investment Recovery of Deminor, said that the settlement had demonstrated that “in Denmark it has now proven to be possible to find a balanced solution to redress investor related claims.”

Burford German Funding Sued Over Hausfeld Ownership Stake

By Harry Moran |

The ownership or funding of law firms by litigation funders continues to be a hot topic in the world of legal funding, with models such as alternative business structures (ABS) gaining momentum in places like Arizona. However, a complaint filed by a client in Delaware reveals a falling out due to the reverse funding model, where a law firm maintained an ownership stake in the funder.

Reporting by Bloomberg Law covers a new lawsuit brought against Burford German Funding (BGF), an affiliate of Burford Capital, by a client who claims that the funder failed to disclose the fact that BGF was partly owned by the same law firm it nominated to lead the client’s antitrust cases. Financialright Claims GMBH (FRC) alleges that when it negotiated the funding agreement with BGF for its antitrust litigation against the trucks cartel, it had no knowledge “that Hausfeld  was  also  a  part  owner  of  BGF  through  an  entity  called German Litigation Solutions LLC (“GLS”) or that one of the lead German partners at Hausfeld responsible for the firm’s representation of FRC had a personal stake.”

The complaint, filed by FRC in the Delaware Superior Court, explains that as Hausfeld is part-owner of BGF, and the funding agreement “provides for a share of FRC’s recoveries in the Trucks Litigations to flow to FRC’s lawyers”, this constitutes a contingency fee arrangement which are illegal under German law.  FRC had filed a lawsuit against Hausfeld in a German court and then applied for discovery from BGF, Burford and GLS in the Delaware District Court, which was followed by an assertion by these parties that the application for discovery “is subject to mandatory arbitration” under the terms of the funding agreement.

FRC argues that “as  a  direct  result  of  BGF’s  fraud  on  FRC,  FRC  did  agree  to  the Arbitration Agreement that—according to BGF—subsumes disputes between FRC and GLS.” However, FRC claims that it “would  never  have  agreed  to  an  arbitration  clause  requiring  it  to arbitrate claims against Hausfeld”, were it not for the concealment of Hausfeld’s ownership stake in BGF. FRC is therefore asking the Superior Court to declare that “BGF fraudulently induced  FRC  into  agreeing  to  the  Arbitration  Agreement”, and that the agreement should be declared both invalid and unenforceable.

Lisa Sharrow, spokesperson at Hausfeld LLP, provided the following statement:  “The US-based Hausfeld LLP and the UK-based Hausfeld & Co LLP hold indirect economic minority interests in Burford German Funding. These are separate legal entities from Hausfeld Rechtsanwälte LLP that do not practice law in Germany. Burford German Funding was of course developed and set up in a way that was fully compliant with all relevant regulations.”

David Helfenbein, spokesperson at Burford, also provided a response to Bloomberg via email: “There is a dispute in Germany between a client Burford has funded and its lawyers. Burford is not a party to that dispute and its outcome has no impact on us. This Delaware proceeding is a third-party discovery request to Burford for material for the German litigation, which Burford believes should be adjudicated in arbitration and not in the Delaware courts.”

The full complaint filed by FRC can be read here.

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