Modulus IP: Patent Licensing for AI-Enabled Companies

About Modulus

Modulus has been engineering high-performance computing and applied AI systems since 1997. Modulus engineering work has spanned finance, aerospace and defense, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, and other industries, supporting both commercial and government counterparties. The technical work underlying the Modulus IP licensable portfolio grew out of decades of original engineering work in those domains, rather than being conceived for the purpose of licensing.

International protection for the Modulus IP licensable portfolio is sought through the Patent Cooperation Treaty in jurisdictions including the European Union, China, Japan, Canada, and India, reflecting the markets in which the underlying methods are commercially relevant. Client references for the Modulus engineering business are available on request.

The Modulus Patent Portfolio

The licensable Modulus IP portfolio contains dozens of issued patents covering modern AI methods, granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The licensable portfolio is held through Modulus holding companies. It is not held by Modulus AI, Inc., and patents held by Modulus AI, Inc. are not part of, and are not offered through, the Modulus IP licensing program.

Patent numbers attributed to “Modulus” in third-party sources, prior reporting, search engine results, or in connection with the broader Modulus engineering history are not necessarily the patents in the Modulus IP licensable portfolio. The authoritative list of patents and claims included in the licensable portfolio is provided in writing, upon request, by Modulus IP to qualified parties and their patent counsel; no other source should be treated as authoritative.

Specific patent identifiers, prosecution histories, chain of title, and supporting diligence materials for the licensable portfolio are provided upon request to qualified parties and their patent counsel. Access to these materials is not gated by entering a licensing conversation, so independent validity and infringement review can be performed by the requestor's own patent attorney before any license discussion proceeds.

What You Are Licensing

The licensable Modulus IP portfolio is large enough that no two licensees enter into identical agreements. Which patents and which claims are included in a particular license depends entirely on what the applicant's product does. Different products read on different methods, and the scope of a Modulus license is built around the product rather than sold as a one-size-fits-all package. Modulus IP works with the applicant to determine which portions of the portfolio are technically relevant.

Patent identifiers are not held back as a reward for completing an application or signing an agreement. Anyone who tells Modulus IP what their product does receives, in writing, the patent numbers and the specific claims that have been identified as technically relevant to those product features, along with a plain-language description of the technical territory each patent family covers. No NDA, letter of intent, qualification gate, or fee is required to receive that information. Detailed claim charts, prosecution histories, chain of title, and other supporting diligence materials are provided under a customary NDA, in line with standard patent licensing practice.

At a high level, the licensable Modulus IP portfolio covers many methods used in modern AI systems. The applicant's patent counsel reviews the specific patents and claims identified for that applicant's product, independently, before any license discussion proceeds.

Why a Modulus License

Modulus is not a litigation-driven business. The Modulus IP licensing program does not exist to extract settlements under the threat of infringement, and Modulus does not bring legal action against parties who consider, decline, or have not entered into a Modulus license. A Modulus license is not a way to make a litigation problem go away, because there is no litigation problem.

A Modulus license is taken by companies that want a documented, written grant of rights tied to specific patents and claims, scoped to their product. Depending on the license, that grant can be exclusive or non-exclusive within the licensee's product category. Companies enter into Modulus licenses for ordinary commercial reasons familiar from any other patent license: securing documented rights to relevant intellectual property, supporting diligence with investors, customers, and government counterparties, and positioning product development against a known patent landscape. The specific use a licensee makes of the license is the licensee's own determination.

About Patent Licensing

A patent is a property right granted by a national patent office, such as the United States Patent and Trademark Office, that gives the patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the claimed invention for a limited statutory term. Patents are issued only after a substantive examination in which a patent examiner compares the claims of the application against the prior art of record and determines that the claims meet statutory requirements for patentable subject matter, novelty, non-obviousness, utility, written description, and enablement. Once issued, a patent enjoys a statutory presumption of validity that can be challenged only through specific procedures, such as inter partes review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board or invalidity defenses raised in infringement litigation.

A patent license is a written commercial agreement in which the patent owner, or an authorized licensor acting on the owner's behalf, grants the licensee a defined set of rights to practice some or all of the claims of one or more identified patents. A license does not transfer ownership of the patent; the patent remains the property of the patent holder. Licenses are typically scoped along several axes, including the identified patents and claims that are licensed, the licensed products or fields of use, the territories in which the license applies, the term of the license, and whether the license is exclusive, non-exclusive, or co-exclusive. A non-exclusive license, which is the most common form of commercial patent license, permits the licensee to practice the claims while leaving the licensor free to grant similar licenses to other parties on similar terms.

Companies enter into patent licenses for a variety of standard commercial reasons. A license provides documented permission to practice claims that a company's product engineering may otherwise read on, regardless of whether infringement has been asserted or established. A license supports diligence requests from investors, acquirers, customers, and government counterparties who reasonably want to see that a company has secured rights to relevant intellectual property. A license also serves as a written record, available to the licensee's counsel, that frames future product development against a known patent landscape. None of these standard rationales requires the licensor to have asserted infringement, and none requires the licensee to admit or concede infringement as a condition of entering into a license.

The standard process of entering into a patent license involves a portfolio review under appropriate confidentiality terms, a coverage analysis in which the licensor and the prospective licensee, each represented by their own patent counsel, examine how identified claims may relate to the prospective licensee's product, and the negotiation and execution of a written license agreement. The same general framework applies whether the licensor is a university technology transfer office, an operating company licensing out portions of its portfolio, a standards-essential patent holder, a research institute, or a dedicated patent licensing program. Modulus IP follows this same standard framework. The Modulus IP program is described on this page using ordinary patent-licensing terminology so that the program can be understood by counsel and decision-makers who are already familiar with that framework.

How a Modulus License Works

A Modulus license is a written commercial agreement granting the licensee defined patent rights for an identified product. Modulus licensing follows the same well-established legal framework described above for standard commercial patent licensing, and the applicant's own patent counsel can review every step at the applicant's pace before any agreement is signed.

The licensing process:

• The prospective licensee and Modulus IP exchange initial information about the prospective licensee's product and the relevant portions of the licensable portfolio under appropriate confidentiality terms.
• Modulus IP prepares a written coverage analysis describing how identified claims may relate to the prospective licensee's product. The prospective licensee's patent counsel reviews this analysis independently.
• License terms, including the scope of the license and the consideration to be paid by the licensee, are discussed with reference to the specific patents and claims involved and the scope of the license requested.
• A written license agreement is executed by the licensee and by Modulus IP, acting through Modulus AI, Inc.
• The license becomes effective in accordance with its terms.

Modulus License Pricing

Modulus license pricing is affordable and is determined after Modulus IP's written coverage analysis and workup. Pricing is set with reference to the specific patents and claims involved and the scope of the license requested, under an internal pricing framework that Modulus IP applies consistently across applicants of comparable scope. License terms, including the consideration to be paid by the licensee, are set out in the written license agreement and are reviewable by the applicant's patent counsel before execution.

About Modulus IP

Modulus IP is the licensing program; it is not the patent owner. The dozens of patents in the licensable portfolio are not held by Modulus IP and are not held by Modulus AI, Inc. They are held through Modulus holding companies, including Modulus Holdings LLC and Modulus Financial Engineering, Inc., and are made available for license through the Modulus IP program, which is operated by Modulus AI, Inc., a Delaware corporation. Modulus AI, Inc. is the operator of the program; it is not the patent holder for the licensable portfolio, and Modulus IP does not license patents held by Modulus AI, Inc. The Modulus licensing program is voluntary and commercial.