Deciding what not to file is as much of the work as the filing.
Maintenance fees come due on every granted patent whether or not you would ever sue over it, so a portfolio nobody would enforce is a standing bill.
Drawings from expired US patents. Lit: US 2,475,841, Frederick M. Jones, Air Conditioning Unit, filed 1944, granted 1949.
Most of this work happens before any paperwork starts.
Companies arrive asking how to file. The more useful conversation is usually about what is worth filing on, in what order, and what should never leave the building in a published application at all.
A patent application publishes. Everything in it becomes a roadmap your competitors can read, so choosing between a patent and a trade secret is a commercial decision before it is a legal one.
For companies raising money or preparing to sell, we also give a candid read on what a diligence team will make of what you hold. That answer is sometimes uncomfortable and always cheaper to hear early.
Questions we help answer
- Does this belong in a patent, or is it better kept as a trade secret
- Which filings should come first, given the runway we have
- What is this portfolio worth in a raise, a sale, or a license
- Are we free to launch this product given what others hold
- Which patents should we stop paying maintenance fees on
Questions we get about this.
How is a patent valued?
There is no single figure. Valuation depends on what the claims actually cover, whether anyone is practicing them, how hard they are to design around, and how long they have left to run.
A patent nobody would infringe and nobody would license has little value regardless of what it cost to obtain. A narrow patent sitting directly across a competitor's product can be worth a great deal.
When should I stop paying maintenance fees?
Maintenance fees on a US utility patent fall due three and a half, seven and a half, and eleven and a half years after grant, each with a six-month surcharge window afterward. Each payment is a decision point.
If nothing in the market reads on the claims and no licensing conversation is live, letting a patent lapse is a legitimate choice. Reviewing the portfolio before each due date is cheaper than paying on autopilot.
Should I patent this or keep it as a trade secret?
A trade secret has no filing fee and no expiry, but it only exists while you take reasonable measures to keep the information secret, and it gives no protection against a competitor who independently develops the same thing.
A process nobody can inspect from the outside is usually the better trade secret. A product that ships and can be taken apart is usually the better patent, because reverse engineering will expose it anyway.
What is freedom to operate?
Freedom to operate is whether you can sell your product without infringing someone else's live patent. It is a different question from whether your invention is patentable, and it is the one that carries commercial risk at launch.
A patent gives you the right to stop others. It does not give you the right to practice your own invention, because someone else's claims may still cover a component of what you built.
Start with the business question.
Tell us what you are trying to protect and why. The filing strategy follows from that, and sometimes the answer is to file less.