Portfolio Optimisation Services – right size your portfolio and reduce maintenance costs
IP portfolio maintenance costs are significant and increase with the age of the portfolio.
Most IP portfolios are bloated and include assets that should either be culled or transacted.
Intellectual property rights should be reviewed on a regular basis but certainly before the payment of maintenance fees, which generally occur annually in the case of patents.
‘Spring cleaning’ is rarely anyone’s favourite activity and intellectual property portfolios rarely get fully reviewed. Most people are reluctant to clean out their intellectual property portfolios for several reasons:
• Emotional attachment to the intellectual property - patents; trademarks; domains etc. (‘all beautiful babies’)
• The belief that size matters and the larger the portfolio the better
• The fear of making a mistake (losing some IP with some hidden future value)
The reality is most portfolios could be reduced by 20% without noticing the change and maintaining IP rights can be expensive. Over $40 billion is spent on patents each year, but less than 20% of companies report that their portfolio is the right size.
When Microsoft did a portfolio review recently it led to $5.8m saved from the patent renewal bill and a 50% reduction in the time taken to file (due to changing attorney firms doing the filing)!
There may even be sales, licensing, partnership, or other BD opportunities available from your intellectual property
The questions to ask about your portfolio:
Do we have a complete and up to date audit of all our intellectual property?
• What contributes to revenue and earnings and protection today?
• Or may contribute in the future?
• What is the relative quality of our IP (internal and external comparisons)?
• What are the risks and gaps in our portfolio (existing and future competitors)?
We help you to:
Identify what you would be comfortable with culling or transaction and streamline your portfolio and save 30% of portfolio maintenance costs
