Intellectual Property Management
Managing Your Patent Portfolio
We recommend a three step approach to managing your patent portfolio from a renewals perspective:
1. For effective intellectual property management in patent maintenance, gather all of your patent data into one single system.
2. Gain insight into your portfolio in order to enable smart commercial decisions in patent annuity management.
3. Take control of your patent renewals by keeping the responsibility of making renewal decisions and instructing renewals in-house.
Controlling Patent Costs
The costs involved in filing a patent application and obtaining grant are significant – with not only official procedural fees to pay, but also the cost of engaging professional expertise to navigate what can be a very long, complex and esoteric process.
What many patent holders do not realise when starting the process is that payment obligations continue throughout the patent’s lifetime through the requirement to pay renewal (or maintenance) fees, also known as annuities as they often occur on an annual basis. Many patent holders continue to use their local patent attorney to manage these ongoing renewal fees, incurring high costs in terms of their own local agent’s fees, plus the fees of the overseas agent that the local agent engages to conduct the fee payment.
Even where the patent owner has decided to use a specialised renewal payment service, costs can remain high, because even though cost savings are achieved by the service, some providers choose not to pass these savings onto their clients. In some cases, additional hidden charges are applied by renewals service providers, particularly in relation to currency exchange where the additional costs can amount to a large percentage of the client’s spend with the provider. Clients are often not aware of these currency exchange charges because some providers headline the “service charge” without mentioning that there is a separate currency charge that can be many times higher than the actual stated service charge.
Start Managing Your Patent Portfolio Now
What to Look For in a Patent Portfolio Management Tool
Bulk Data Tools
Ensure you can maximise efficiency and manage large portfolios with bulk data import and multi-patent editing tools.
Portfolio Insight from Reports
With automatically-generated, printable and downloadable reports you can quickly see a listing of all your patents which are held in the system and budget for future costs. This is important for budgeting and the cost calculations required for a commercial cost-benefit analysis of patent worthiness.
Easy Ways to Record Decisions
Decisions can change throughout the year and it may become the right time to drop a patent from your portfolio. Ensure you can decide whether to renew patents or to allow the patent to lapse if indeed you do not wish to bear the cost of maintaining the patent where it is no longer commercially viable.[/toggle][/toggles]
Managing Intellectual Property with RenewalsDesk
Intellectual property management can seem like a daunting task. With the right tools, it’s possible to manage your portfolio, make good decisions based on sound cost forecasts and instruct and track renewals in-house.
The RenewalsDesk online patent management service allows you to save the details of all of your patents in one central location and provides all of the above benefits as standard. We also pride ourselves on providing an excellent service at a fair price, so we are as transparent as possible about costs throughout the entire process. It’s free to create an account to get a quote on your renewal costs and our account management team is here to answer any questions you may have at any time.
