Patent Lawyer, Denver‘s Mark Trenner answers questions about your Patent Portfolio.

Link to Video: What is a patent portfolio?

Interviewer: How can an intellectual property portfolio be a source of revenue?patent lawyer

Patent Attorney: By licensing or even selling the rights under the patents, trademarks, copyrights, and even trade secrets to others to use.

Interviewer: The article goes on to say that not all portfolios are created equal. What do they mean?

Patent Attorney: A collection of assets is only as valuable as the assets themselves. If the patents, or trademarks, or other types of intellectual property have no value, then the portfolio will not have much, if any, value either.

Interviewer: So how do you strategically develop an intellectual property portfolio?

Patent Attorney: The article has some good suggestions. First, the article says that filing a patent application for every invention disclosure submitted by a company’s employees does not properly value the underlying technology. Some technology will have more value, and thus be more important to protect with one or maybe even more patent, while other technology may have little, or even no value. Spending money to protect inventions with little value wastes valuable resources that could be better spent protecting the more important technology – or better developing the intellectual property portfolio – perhaps by filing trademarks, copyrights, and investing in trade secrets.

For Part 3, see Patent Portfolio Q & A – Part 3 of 4

 

Mark Trenner is a patent attorney, licensed with the U.S. Patent Office and in the state of Colorado. Mr. Trenner has over 15 years experience in the intellectual property field, and started Trenner Law Firm in 2004 to serve independent inventors, small and medium size businesses, and large corporations. General Information Only - Not Legal Advice (see full disclaimer below).