Intellectual Property Law

Many companies have built substantial patent portfolios by filing large numbers of patent applications.  In many cases, the decision about how to prepare and file the application is based largely - and sometimes solely - on cost.  When measuring the results of a corporate patent department’s activity, the corporation’s assessment largely relies on simple metrics such as “How many patent applications did we file?” and “How much did each application cost?” 

This strategy ignores the quality of each patent application, as quality is not easily measured across a portfolio of recently-filed application.  Rather, patent quality is typically not understood until the patent issues and an enforcement or licensing opportunity arises.  At that point, companies often find that a low-budget filing strategy resulted in a very narrow patent or a potentially invalid patent. 

Corporate patent departments already know that a low-cost filing strategy is risky, but they may have difficulty convincing financial executives of those risks.  a new report provides another reason to reconsider low-cost patent strategies:  in the long term, a low-cost, high-volume strategy actually costs more. (more…)