Article One completes $5 million institutional funding round with Alleghany Capital

Article One Partners, the world's largest patent research community, today announced the completion of a $5 million round of institutional funding with Alleghany Capital Corporation, a subsidiary of Alleghany Corporation (N YSE: Y), and other investors. The funding will be used to further consolidate the firm's leading position in the global online patent validation sector by enhancing existing products and services, developing new ones and accelerating sales. Article One added a record number of clients in the first half of fiscal year 2010, bringing the total number of clients to 40, including 12 of the Fortune 100.

Alleghany Capital led the institutional round, following a $3 Million Series A investment in 2009 by private investors and General Catalyst Partners. Article One Partners' Board Member Marshall Phelps is a key investor in this new round. Mr. Phelps is a prominent leader in the patent industry. His career includes overseeing Intellectual Property and Licensing at IBM for 28 years before being recruited by Chairman Bill Gates to develop the Microsoft patent portfolio and licensing program.

"Article One has proven its ability to help companies reduce litigation costs while growing patent quality. This trend, together with its high caliber management team, is among the key reasons we were attracted to Article One Partners," commented Weston Hicks, CEO of Alleghany Corporation.

Article One clients now include 11 of the top 15 U.S. high tech companies. Clients span many industries, including the telecommunications, automotive, biomedical, pharmaceutical, and consumer electronics sectors, and include premier international law firms.

Article One's community of millions of researchers gathers patent validity evidence, discovered from around the world, with a speed and depth that traditional patent research can't match. The community's ability to access research in many languages, as well as its access to non-digitized publications, produces a quality of research that only human knowledge experts can achieve.

"Businesses, individuals and governments everywhere are benefiting from on-demand access to shared resources," said Marshall Phelps, who was responsible for significant intellectual property cost savings at Microsoft and IBM. "This funding will enable AOP to accelerate expansion of its global crowdsourcing techniques and make access to patent validity evidence and patent analysis efforts more cost efficient."