Sell-off of Aquamarine intellectual property begins

Aquamarine was been forced to stop trading last month after it failed to find a buyer having called in administrators at the end of October, saying the economic climate had “significantly affected” its business.

A total of 14 jobs have been lost, 13 in Edinburgh and one in Belfast.

IP specialists Metis Partners, is now overseeing the sell-off of the assets at Aquamarine, which was founded in 2005 to bring innovative wave energy technology to the commercial energy renewables market.

Aquamarine Power’s unique proprietary technology is an offshore converter of waves’ motion into electrical energy with a base at the EMEC (European Marine Energy Centre) at Billia Croo in Orkney.

Amongst the intellectual property assets for sale, is the technology behind its internationally patent-protected Oyster device which captures energy from nearshore waves and converts it into clean, sustainable electricity.

To date, the company has spent more than £90 million in the development of its technology, and has worked with Carnegie Wave Energy Limited and Bosch Rexroth.

Nat Baldwin, head of corporate recovery at Metis Partners, said: “Anyone who acquires these unique IP assets has the opportunity to capitalise substantially on a technology which will only become more critical as the years go by.

“We expect the sale to be of interest to companies active in the renewable energy, oil and gas, energy efficiency, engineering and desalination sectors as well as to patent aggregators.”

The IP assets include: an international patent portfolio, an extensive design portfolio, goodwill in the Aquamarine Power brand and reputation, key organisational knowledge including test data, technical specifications and thorough operational guides, registered trademarks with international coverage, branded domain names and website content.

The deadline for offers is noon on Thursday 21st January 2016.