What can I do to get more value out of my patent portfolio?

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David Roberts, Intellectual Property Attorney: A patent portfolio represents a significant investment for every company. The problem that we see too often is that the value is not being maximized from the portfolio. One of the first ways to think about increasing the value that you receive from your portfolio is through licensing.

Licensing is an opportunity to take a look at maybe underutilized areas of your portfolio and think about who could be a natural licensing partner. But deeper than that, we encourage companies to think about whether or not there are opportunities to license geographically or license in a field of use. So what could happen is that your patent portfolio may be particularly suitable for your product or service, but there may be some other company that could use the product or service that they have and marry it with your patent protection as well.

One of the things that companies often are scared to think about is collaboration. So you should be looking for opportunities along the value stream, or perhaps even with a competitor, to jointly develop a new product that could be beneficial and return more value to both parties involved.

The second thing to think about is leadership and being perceived as a market leader. So the portfolio is really a way to leverage your voice in the marketplace, and so by marketing and by speaking and writing always with a reference to patented or patent-pending products, you’ll be able to position yourself as a market leader.

The third thing that some companies think about is formal enforcement, or even litigation. I would encourage every company to think about the cost before making the first step. Litigation is an extremely costly activity and so the return needs to be clear, the goal needs to be clear, before taking the first step. There are some real cost-effective ways that the Patent Office now, called post grant appeal, and some other methods, to challenge patents or to assert patent rights in a less costly or more cost-effective way.