Portfolio pruning is like weight loss

What is the ideal weight for your IP portfolio?
Most people are reluctant to prune their portfolio for several reasons.






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Yesterday I read about a person who lost 12 stone in 8 months by changing diet, (drastically reduced carbs) this followed 3 years losing 2.5 stone following a physician prescribed diet to try and qualify for a gastric band. However, if you are like me it has been weight gain not weight loss during lockdown.
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Anyway to the IP portfolio: most people are reluctant to prune the portfolio for several reasons:

• Emotional attachment to the patents, trademarks or domain names (aka ‘no ugly babies’ in my brood)
• The belief that size matters
• The fear of making a mistake (losing some IP with some hidden future value)

The reality is most people could save 20% without noticing the change.
When Microsoft did a portfolio review recently they also evaluated their external providers by doing a pendency analysis (comparing time taken to file/ average number of actions etc) they dropped 20 IP law firms and the review of portfolios led to $5.8m saved from the renewal bill and a 50% reduction in the time taken to file !

There may even be sales, licensing, partnership or other BD opportunities available from your IP.
The questions to ask about your IP portfolio:

• What contributes to revenue and earnings 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 have been doing these reviews since 2007 for some of the world’s leading companies.
No one would recommend drastic and sudden weight loss but I think we could agree on safely losing a few pounds during this lockdown.

If you would like to discuss further please get in touch: john@exaltip.com

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