Patent Portfolio Management

Patent portfolios tend to be complex sets of patent filings, many of which are related to each other in what are referred to as patent “families.” In addition to the patent families of one particular country (e.g. U.S. patent filings), patents frequently have foreign counterparts – cousins and other relatives that can run up costs very substantially. Simply understanding what the portfolio consists of is an important first step to managing those assets. Once the portfolio is properly understood, the assets, including issued, pending, and expired patents, can be analyzed to determine where the value resides, and how best to optimize the portfolio.

Patent Family Identification

Patent family identification includes the basic analysis of which patents are related to each other and how (direct continuation, continuation-in-part, international counterpart) and the status of the asset (issued and enforceable, pending, near expiration or expired).

Patent Portfolio Mining

Patent portfolio mining involves determining which assets are likely to be the most valuable in terms of current or near-term use, and what it will take to prove out use by competitors or the market in general. Patents are typically rated in terms of the breadth of the claims, difficulty to design around the claimed features, ease of detectability of use, and present or near-term adoption of the technology by the marketplace.

Patent Portfolio Mapping

Patent portfolio mapping involves examining the claims of issued patents, mapping these claims to current products, and determining the royalty base formed by those products. TPL’s no-nonsense approach to claim mapping and royalty base determination will reveal what revenues one can realistically expect from a set of patents, as opposed to the hypothetical value often ascribed to patents “appearing” to be important. Armed with this knowledge, managers can then make appropriate decisions regarding how to best manage assets and where to make additional investments.

Patent Portfolio Monetization

In portfolio monetization, assets of particular value are analyzed and a determination is made as to how best to utilize those assets: through cross licensing, sale, enforcement to bar competitors from the market, or enforcement for revenue generation. The risks and rewards of each strategy are carefully considered.

Patent Portfolio Pruning

Careful examination of the portfolio is performed to determine which assets can be safely abandoned without impacting the overall value of the portfolio. Statistically, the vast majority of patents will not provide economic value to the patent holder, although the few that do can provide tremendous value and return on patent investment. TPL can guide you through the process of identifying those assets that are not likely to contain claimed technology that will be utilized during the lifetime of the asset. By trimming assets, particularly foreign counterparts to U.S. assets, the overall cost of maintaining a portfolio can be greatly reduced without substantially decreasing the overall value.