(FORTUNE Magazine) – For years companies like Du Pont have been struggling to find better ways to market their intellectual property. In Du Pont's case, the chemical giant has a warehouse of 18,000 patents, a huge source of potential profit if licensed to other companies. Despite that, Du Pont was rarely able to initiate deals. Of the 3,000 unsolicited inquiries the company received last year from outsiders looking to buy or sell technologies, not a single one resulted in a deal. Only in February did Du Pont appoint a person whose main responsibility is to handle such transactions.

That appointment comes just as the intellectual-property terrain is changing. Now, via the Internet (and a du Pont family member, among others), comes a potential solution to this dysfunctional market: business-to-business exchanges for intellectual property. Before you groan at the idea of yet another B2B exchange promising to "revolutionize" an area of business, consider this: These exchanges are built on a theory different from their predecessors'. Unlike most exchanges, which seek to save money for buyers by combining their purchasing clout or rationalizing an existing market, these are out to create a market where none has existed.

Yes, companies have tried to sell IP for years. But the process has been so fragmented that only a tiny 2% of the estimated $5 trillion in new intellectual property worldwide was licensed in 1998. The nascent exchanges, including Yet2.com (pronounced "yet to come"), will centralize the process. Though they bridle at the comparison, the exchanges function as eBays for corporate patents: They're creating a venue where previously unexploited ideas can find a market.

Until now, companies had to guess who might have what they were looking for or who might buy what they wanted to sell. Then would come what could be years of cold calling and letter writing. "It was shoe leather and Rolodex driven," says Ben du Pont, 36, co-founder and president of Yet2.com. "I was at Du Pont for 14 years, and I didn't have the foggiest idea what my own employer had available for licensing." From initial contact to the final handshake, a deal might take anywhere from 18 months to three years.

Yet2.com hopes not only to simplify and speed up this process but also to match unlikely partners. After all, some of the most significant discoveries happen by accident. For example, Procter & Gamble recently discovered (independent of any exchange) that its patent for an enzyme used in Tide detergent can also be used as a lubricant for oil drilling and as a contact-lens cleaner.

Such discoveries were few and far between when Ben du Pont was at his family's company. Along with managing Du Pont's Lycra brand and launching the company's online presence in 1994, he was informally responsible for finding new uses for Du Pont's technology. Frustrated, Ben du Pont hatched the idea for Yet2.com with Chris De Bleser, 44, a former manager of the technical and digital-imaging business at Polaroid.

Yet2.com went live in February. In its few months of existence, the Cambridge, Mass., dot-com has attracted over 100 companies and inked exclusive deals with 37 large corporations, such as Philips, Honeywell, Polaroid, and Boeing. Meanwhile, competing exchanges have emerged, including the Patent & License Exchange (pl-x.com) and Patentauction.com.

The exchanges function similarly. Each allows members to browse through posted descriptions of patented processes or technologies. If a potential buyer wants to explore a deal, the exchange will then act as a broker. Though most of them are too new to have actually concluded a deal, they hope to earn revenues by charging fees and commissions. Potential buyers pay Yet2.com, for example, between $500 and $1,000 in membership fees, depending on the level of detail they want to access. When a patent is sold, Yet2.com will then take 10% of the sale.

To avoid legal snags, Yet2.com and pl-x.com (which is still in beta testing but has raised more than $30 million from backers such as Softbank and Ernst & Young) will do some basic checking, for example, to verify that a company actually holds a patent it is attempting to license. Yet2.com and pl-x.com also check the backgrounds of potential buyers. "By the time [a potential buyer] gets to us, we know they're a serious player," says Tom Powell, director of Du Pont's new Corporate Intellectual Assets business. "[Prescreening] eliminates the tire kickers on the front end."

It's too early to assess whether these exchanges will be successful. But in less than two months Yet2.com has successfully "introduced" five partners to one another. Du Pont is one of those--it found a potential buyer within one week of posting its first patent.

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