Article One Partners (AOP), a New York City-based large patent research community, has closed a $7m round of institutional funding with Alleghany Capital Corporation, a subsidiary of Alleghany Corporation (NYSE: Y).
The company intends to use the capital to go to market, and continue to empower its community of expert patent researchers.
This is the second round of institutional financing by Alleghany Capital, which completed a $5 million round in the third quarter of 2010 (read here).
Founded in 2008 by CEO Cheryl Milone, AOP enables a crowd to respond to requests for research in the patent area allowing stakeholders to make IP-based decisions with speed and accuracy.
It is active in 188 countries and presents search requests in 10 languages. The company, which serves the electronics, communications, automotive, biomedical and pharmaceutical industries, partners to 16 Fortune 100 companies, 50 Forbes Global 2000 and 7 of the top 10 US patent filers.
Its board is led led by Marshall Phelps, the former head of patents and licensing at IBM and Microsoft.
FinSMEs
05/03/2012