Alexander I. Poltorak is the Founder, Chairman and the CEO of General Patent Corporation (GPC), an intellectual property (IP) firm focusing on intellectual property strategy and valuation, IP licensing and enforcement. He also serves as the Managing Director of IP Holdings LLC (IPH), an IP-centric merchant banking boutique providing IP-focused financial, brokerage and advisory services, and operating an idea incubator. Prior to establishing GPC in 1987, Alex Poltorak was President and CEO of Rapitech Systems, Inc., a computer technology company that he had founded in 1983 and took public in 1986. Before that, he served as Assistant Professor of Biomathematics at the Neurology Department of Cornell University Medical College. He also served as Assistant Professor of Physics at Touro College. Poltorak has published numerous papers in scientific journals.
Alexander Poltorak taught business law as Adjunct Professor at the Globe Institute of Technology and is a regular guest-lecturer on intellectual property law and economics at the Columbia University School of Business.
Alexander Poltorak is the Founder and President of a non-profit association, American Innovators for Patent Reform.
Poltorak is a Certified Licensing Professional. He was among the first licensing professionals to be awarded this certification by the Licensing Executives Society (LES) of US and Canada. In 2010 he was recognized in the IAM Strategy 250, a publication of Intellectual Asset Management magazine listing the the world's 250 leading IP strategists; in 2012, he was again recognized by the magazine as part of the IAM Strategy 300.
Poltorak emigrated from the former U.S.S.R. in 1982, where he was awarded a graduate degree in Theoretical Physics equivalent to a Ph.D. in 1980. As a political dissident, he was stripped of his degrees for anticommunist activities.
Alexander Poltorak has co-authored two books with Paul Lerner:
• Essentials of Intellectual Property (John Wiley & Sons Publishers, Inc., 2002) and
• Essentials of Licensing Intellectual Property (John Wiley & Sons Publishers, Inc., 2003).
Alex Poltorak also contributed a chapter, "On Patent Trolls and Other Myths," to
• Making Innovation Pay: People Who Turn IP Into Shareholder Value. Ed. B. Berman (John Wiley & Sons Publishers, Inc., 2006).
Poltorak has authored and co-authored numerous articles on intellectual property, including:
• Regular contributions to General Patent Corporation’s newsletter Wealth of Ideas®
• "Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Patents," (University Business, October 2009)
• “Who Needs Patents?” (Patent Strategy & Management, March 2009)
• “Protecting The Interests Of American Inventors” (Washington Watch, 2009)
• “First-to-File vs. First-to-Invent” (IP Today, April 2008);
• “U.S. can't afford to mar innovation: Proposed patent reforms mean less protection for the underdog.” (Christian Science Monitor, January 28, 2008);
• “The Supreme Court Take the Middle Ground in the eBay Case” (Patent Strategy & Management, v.6, No.12, July 2006);
• “‘Patent Trolls’ and Injunctive Relief” (Patent Strategy & Management, v.6, No. 12, May 2006);
• “Industrywide Patent Enforcement Strategies” Part One and Part Two (Patent Strategy & Management, Oct. and Nov. 2005);
• “What You Need to Know About Patents and Their Value” (Technology.Review.com, April, 2005);
• “A ‘Real World’ Risk-Adjusted Patent Valuation Model” (Patent Strategy & Management, November 2004 and January 2005);
• “Valuing Patents as Market Monopolies” (Patent Strategy & Management, September 2003);
• “Valuing Individual Patents Comprising a Portfolio” (Patent Strategy & Management, October 2003);
• “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Intellectual Property Law but Couldn’t Afford to Ask” (American Venture magazine, August 2003);
• “Are Patents Bad for the Economy?” (New York Business Focus, August 2002);
• “Introducing Litigation Risk Analysis” (Managing Intellectual Property, May 2001);
• “Corporate Officers and Directors Can Be Liable for Mismanaging Intellectual Property” (Patent Strategy & Management, May and June 2000);
• “Grain, Grain, Go Away” (Intellectual Property Worldwide, February, 2000); and
• “Patent Enforcement: To Sue or Not to Sue?” (Inventors’ Digest, November/December 2000 and January/February 2001).
Poltorak gave lectures and taught workshops on
• “Patent Valuation” at the 3rd Patent Strategies conference in New York, 2007
• “Fundamentals of Assertive Licensing” at the LES 2006 Annual Meeting in New York
• “Patent Valuation” at the LES 2004 Annual Meeting in Boston
• “Patent Valuation” at the LES Silicon Valley Chapter in 2003
• “Patent Valuation” at the LES Connecticut/Westchester Chapter in 2002
He was a speaker at
• IP Finance and Valuation Conference in New York, 2009
• National Association of Patent Practitioners in Alexandria, VA, 2008
• IP Finance and Valuation Conference in New York, 2008
• IP Finance and Valuation Conference in New York, 2007
• Chaired a session and presented at the “Calculating & Proving Patent Damages" Conference in Philadelphia, 2006
• The Patent Strategy – 2006 Conference in New York
• The IPO Conference in March 2005 in Washington, DC
• The AIPLA meeting in May 2005 in Philadelphia
• “Life after Rembrandts – New Development in IP Strategy” seminar in August 2005 in Chicago.
• Maximizing Returns on Intellectual Property Conferences in New York, 2005
Alexander Poltorak was profiled in a New York Times feature article (Teresa Riordan, “Trying to Cash in on Patents,” June 10, 2002) and by IP Investor Magazine (“He Wrote the Book,” Apr. 2007).
Alex has been often interviewed on CNN, CBS, Tokyo TV, CFO Magazine, InstitutionalInvestor.com, WallStreetReporter.com, Industry Week, EE Times and Bloomberg Radio. He serves on the advisory editorial board of Patent Strategy & Management. Tokyo TV Ch. 12 featured a documentary about Poltorak and his company in May of 2002.
Poltorak is a member of the Licensing Executives Society (LES), the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), the New York Academy of Science, the American Physical Society, International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a U.S. co-chairman for the Subcommittee on Information Exchange of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council.
Alexander Poltorak was awarded seven U.S. patents.