Archives: Insights

Why patent attorney billing is more expensive than it needs to be The patent legal market runs on an assumption that has been outdated for years. The assumption is that patent work is inherently custom, difficult to price predictably, and best delivered by high-billing-rate partners at premium firms. Some patent work fits that description. Litigation, […]

Why the distinction matters more than most people think Ask a founder or IP leader whether they need a patent agent or a patent attorney, and the answer often defaults to attorney without much analysis. The default reflects a general assumption that lawyers are always the safer choice, and that if the work involves patents, […]

Why the traditional outside counsel model is under pressure For decades, the default operating model for patent filings at growth-stage companies has been: hire a boutique patent firm or BigLaw for prosecution work, bill hourly, budget an approximate range per matter, and accept that the actual cost will vary with how many hours the firm […]

Why office action responses matter more than most applicants realize Office action responses are the recurring, invisible cost of patent prosecution. The initial filing gets attention, budget, and celebration when it happens. The office actions that follow arrive quietly, get delegated to whoever has bandwidth, and often get responded to reflexively rather than strategically. Over […]

Why IP diligence is the moment of truth for the IP function Every IP function operates for years without external scrutiny. Filings get made, portfolios grow, outside counsel does its work, reports go to the CFO. The rigor of the operating model is largely invisible from outside the function. Then a fundraising round starts, or […]

Why “how to patent an idea” is the wrong question The most common misconception in first-time patent inquiries is that ideas themselves are patentable. They are not. Patent law protects inventions, which are specific, tangible, functional implementations of ideas. The abstract idea of “using AI to detect fraud” is not patentable. A specific machine learning […]

Why provisional patents matter more than they get credit for The provisional patent application is one of the most useful and one of the most misunderstood tools in US patent practice. Founders often either skip provisionals entirely (going straight to a non-provisional and paying the full cost immediately) or over-rely on them (filing provisionals that […]

Why the honest answer to “how much does a patent cost” is uncomfortable Ask ten patent attorneys what a patent costs and you will get ten different answers, all technically correct. The range spans from a few thousand dollars for a bare-bones provisional filed with no attorney involvement to well over $50,000 for a heavily […]

The honest answer to the timing question “How long does it take to get a patent” is really two questions with different answers. The first is how long the entire process takes, from initial disclosure through examination to a granted patent. The second is how long the applicant is actually working on it, versus waiting […]

Why freedom to operate is the risk category most often mishandled Freedom to operate analysis sits in an awkward place for growth-stage companies. It is legally important (a product that infringes a third-party patent creates real litigation risk), operationally invisible (there is no immediate consequence for skipping it), and historically expensive (traditional FTO opinions from […]

Why annuity payments deserve more attention than they get The standard treatment of patent annuity payments in an IP function is a docket entry, a routing email, and a wire transfer. The decision to pay or abandon gets a few minutes of attention per asset, somewhere between the annuity provider’s reminder and the deadline. Multiply […]

Why IP risk management deserves more structure than it gets At most growth-stage companies, IP risk management runs as a series of disconnected exercises. Freedom-to-operate gets done before product launch, sometimes. Infringement monitoring happens when an inventor flags something they saw at a trade show. Trade secret protection is whatever language the standard employment agreement […]

What “managing the portfolio” actually means at a Series C company There is a version of patent portfolio management that lives in textbooks. It involves five-year strategic plans, dedicated portfolio analysts, and quarterly steering committees. It is not the version anyone reading this is doing. The real job, at a company with 80 to 400 […]

What competitive patent analysis actually means The phrase “competitive patent analysis” gets used loosely. At one extreme, it means running a quarterly landscape report that sits on the IP leader’s desktop and gets opened during board prep. At the other, it means an operating discipline where competitor filings, claim positions, and white spaces inform filing […]

Why annuity payments deserve more attention than they get The standard treatment of patent annuity payments in an IP function is a docket entry, a routing email, and a wire transfer. The decision to pay or abandon gets a few minutes of attention per asset, somewhere between the annuity provider’s reminder and the deadline. Multiply […]

Why most companies have lost more IP control than they realize The default operating model for IP at growth-stage companies looks like this: the company hires outside counsel to handle prosecution. The firm builds the portfolio, files the patents, prosecutes through to grant, and tracks the docket. The company pays bills, gets patents, and trusts […]

Why IP management deserves more strategic attention than it gets For most of the last twenty years, IP management at growth-stage companies has been treated as a back-office discipline. The function existed to file patents, manage trademarks, and keep the renewal calendar running. The strategic conversations happened elsewhere — in product, engineering, business development, and […]

Why brand IP protection is harder than it looks The standard advice on brand IP protection is to register trademarks, sign NDAs, and use form contracts. Each of these matters. None of them, individually or together, produces a brand IP program that holds up under enforcement scrutiny or M&A diligence. The harder reality is that […]

The operational threshold where IP functions break Patent portfolios scale unevenly. A 50-asset portfolio is operationally trivial. A 100-asset portfolio is manageable with discipline. A 200-asset portfolio requires real structure. By 500 active assets, an IP function that has not invested in operating infrastructure is no longer managing the portfolio — it is reacting to […]

Why most patent claims read on less than people think they do The first time an IP leader runs a claim mapping exercise on an inherited portfolio, the result is usually uncomfortable. Roughly 60-70% of the claims map cleanly to something — a product feature, a competitor product, a defensive position. The other 30-40% read […]