Patent Portfolio Management Attorney — Austin, Texas
A strategic approach to building, maintaining, and maximizing the value of your patent portfolio over time — proactively managing your IP assets through continuation planning, competitive monitoring, and maintenance fee decisions rather than reacting to individual filings in isolation.
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Portfolio Management for Austin Startups and Growing Companies
Austin's startup ecosystem produces companies that need patent portfolio strategy from the very beginning but often do not have the budget for large law firm retainers or in-house patent counsel. I provide portfolio management services calibrated to startup realities — focusing resources on the highest-value filings building a coherent prosecution strategy across related applications and providing strategic guidance that aligns patent decisions with business milestones like fundraising product launches and competitive responses.
Many startup portfolio management engagements evolve naturally into fractional IP counsel relationships where I provide ongoing strategic patent guidance as an integrated part of the company's IP function. For Austin companies at the seed through Series B stage this combination of portfolio management and strategic counsel provides the most cost-effective path to building genuine IP value — directly supporting fundraising conversations product development strategy and long-term competitive positioning.
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Patent Portfolio Management Services
Building a patent portfolio that genuinely protects your technology and supports your business goals requires ongoing strategic oversight — not just individual patent filings in isolation.
I offer a free 30-minute consultation to assess your current portfolio, identify strengths and gaps, and discuss a strategic roadmap for portfolio development aligned with your business objectives.
Whether you are an individual inventor with a single patent planning your next filing, a startup building a portfolio to support fundraising, or an established company managing a growing collection of patents and pending applications, I bring 17 years of prosecution experience and genuine technical depth to portfolio management.
Serving Austin inventors, startups, and corporate IP teams across every major technology area. Call or text (512) 293-0710, email sconnolly@austin-patent-attorney.com, or fill out the form.
Phone: 512-293-0710
Email: sconnolly@austin-patent-attorney.com
Location: Austin, Texas
Serving Austin, Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, and all of Central Texas.
USPTO matters are federal — I work with clients throughout Texas and nationwide.
What Is Patent Portfolio Management?
Patent portfolio management is the ongoing strategic oversight of a company's collection of patent assets — coordinating filing decisions maintenance fee payments continuation strategy licensing opportunities and competitive monitoring to maximize the portfolio's value over time. Unlike individual patent prosecution which focuses on getting a single patent granted portfolio management looks across the entire collection of patents and pending applications to ensure they work together to protect your technology and support your business goals.
For inventors and early-stage startups with just a few patents portfolio management focuses on filing strategy and prosecution coordination. For established companies with large patent portfolios it involves sophisticated analytics competitive intelligence maintenance cost management and active licensing or enforcement programs. I tailor portfolio management services to the size stage and strategic needs of each client.
What To File - What To Maintain - What To Abandon
One of the most valuable aspects of portfolio management is helping clients make informed decisions about which inventions to patent which pending applications to maintain and which granted patents to keep or abandon. Not every innovation warrants the cost of a patent application. Not every granted patent warrants the ongoing maintenance fees required to keep it in force. Strategic portfolio management ensures your IP budget is allocated to the assets that provide the most value.
I assess each patent and pending application against criteria including the scope and strength of the claims the current commercial relevance of the technology the cost to maintain versus the likely enforcement or licensing value and the competitive landscape. This assessment drives recommendations on what to file continue or abandon — ensuring your portfolio investment is concentrated in assets that genuinely protect and advance your business.
Continuation Strategy As Portfolio Building
Strategic continuation practice is one of the most powerful portfolio building tools available. Continuation applications allow you to pursue new claims based on your original disclosures as your product evolves and your competitive landscape becomes clearer — building layered protection across multiple patents that cover different aspects of your technology. I advise clients on continuation opportunities throughout their prosecution lifecycle.
For startups approaching fundraising rounds or potential acquisition carefully timed continuation filings can significantly increase the apparent size and depth of your patent portfolio. Investors and acquirers look at pending applications as indicators of future patent protection as much as granted patents — a well-managed continuation strategy keeps your portfolio growing in ways that matter for business development as well as technical protection.
Competitive Patent Monitoring
Understanding what your competitors are filing is as important as managing your own portfolio. Competitive patent monitoring involves tracking competitor patent applications as they publish identifying new technologies your competitors are developing analyzing their portfolio strengths and weaknesses and identifying potential freedom to operate issues before they become problems.
I provide competitive patent monitoring as part of portfolio management services — reviewing competitor patent publications in relevant technology areas and providing strategic assessments of how their filings affect your IP position. For Austin semiconductor software and medical device companies operating in competitive markets this intelligence is often directly actionable — informing both prosecution strategy for your own applications and product development decisions.
[ Related Services ]
Patent portfolio management clients often also work with me on:
[Continuation Patent Applications] · [Freedom to Operate Opinions] · [Patent Valuation] · [Fractional IP Counsel] · [Startup IP Strategy]
[ Patent Portfolio Management FAQs — Austin, Texas ]
Question: Can you manage a portfolio that was built by other attorneys?
Answer: Yes — I regularly take over portfolio management for companies that have worked with multiple attorneys or firms and need consolidated strategic oversight. I review the existing portfolio assess its strengths and gaps and develop a forward-looking strategy for prosecution continuation and maintenance decisions.
Question: What is a patent portfolio dashboard and how should an Austin technology company use one?
Answer: A patent portfolio dashboard is a management tool that provides a real-time view of all pending applications, issued patents, maintenance fee deadlines, continuation opportunities, and competitive patent developments across an entire patent portfolio in a single organized interface. For Austin technology companies at growth stage — with 10 to 50 active patent assets — a portfolio dashboard transforms patent management from reactive deadline tracking into proactive strategic management. As fractional IP counsel I maintain portfolio dashboards for my clients that track not just administrative deadlines but strategic indicators — applications approaching allowance that trigger continuation filing decisions, patents approaching their 3.5-year maintenance fee deadline that warrant keep-or-abandon assessment, and competitor patent publications that create FTO or portfolio response considerations. The dashboard makes portfolio management decisions visible and deliberate rather than reactive and ad hoc.
Question: How do you decide which patents in an existing portfolio deserve maintenance fee investment versus strategic abandonment?
Answer: The maintenance fee decision for each patent involves assessing five factors specific to that patent: whether the technology it covers is still commercially active and likely to remain so for the remaining maintenance fee period; whether the claims are broad enough to provide meaningful competitive protection or have been narrowed to the point of being designable around; whether the patent covers technology that competitors are actually practicing; whether the patent has licensing potential justifying the ongoing maintenance cost; and whether the portfolio's overall strategic coherence is served by maintaining this specific asset. Patents that score poorly on all five factors are candidates for strategic abandonment — freeing the maintenance fee resources for new prosecution investments in more strategically valuable assets. This is not a decision to make reflexively or by formula — some patents that appear commercially obsolete retain value as prior art that constrains competitors' ability to obtain patents in the same space.
Answer: A patent family coordination strategy ensures that prosecution decisions across all applications in a family — US parent, US continuations, divisionals, and national phase applications in EPO, Japan, Korea, and other jurisdictions — are made in a coordinated way that strengthens the family as a whole rather than creating inconsistencies or inadvertent claim scope differences that complicate future licensing and enforcement. Key coordination decisions include: ensuring that claim amendments made in US prosecution to overcome prior art are reflected in corresponding national phase claims before similar prior art is cited in foreign examination; using favorable foreign examination outcomes to support US PPH requests that accelerate US prosecution; and maintaining consistency in the technical characterizations made across jurisdictions so that no prosecution history in any jurisdiction creates inadvertent limitations on claims in other jurisdictions. I manage family coordination through regular review of all family members' prosecution status and specific communication with foreign associates about the implications of US prosecution developments for their prosecution strategy.
Question: What is a patent family coordination strategy and why does it matter for an Austin company with both US and international prosecution?
Question: How does patent portfolio management change as an Austin startup progresses from seed to Series A to Series B?
Answer: Portfolio management needs evolve significantly across funding stages — and the portfolio strategy appropriate for each stage differs in ways that some founders do not appreciate until they are preparing for a funding round and discover gaps that could have been addressed earlier. At seed stage the priority is establishing priority dates on core innovations before public disclosures — one to three well-drafted provisional applications covering the foundational technology. At Series A the priority shifts to building demonstrable portfolio depth — converting provisionals to non-provisionals with strong claims, initiating PCT filings for international coverage, and ensuring clean IP assignment documentation that satisfies investor diligence. At Series B and beyond, portfolio management becomes genuinely strategic — active continuation practice directed at competitive developments, coordinated international prosecution across key markets, and portfolio analytics that tell a coherent story about the company's IP position relative to its competitive landscape. I calibrate portfolio management services to each client's specific stage rather than applying a one-size-fits-all portfolio approach.
Question: What is a patent assertion entity and how should Austin technology companies factor PAE risk into their portfolio strategy?
Answer: Patent assertion entities — companies that acquire patents primarily for licensing and litigation rather than practicing the underlying technology — represent a meaningful risk for Austin technology companies in software, semiconductor, and communications technology sectors where PAE activity is historically concentrated. PAE risk affects portfolio strategy in two ways. Defensively, Austin companies need to understand their exposure to PAE patents in their technology space — which requires periodic FTO monitoring not just of competitor operating company patents but of the patent acquisition activity of known PAEs in relevant technology areas. Offensively, a company with its own strong patent portfolio has cross-licensing leverage that, while less effective against non-practicing PAEs than against operating companies, still affects licensing negotiation dynamics and litigation economics. I advise Austin technology clients on PAE risk assessment as a component of portfolio strategy — identifying known PAE portfolios relevant to their technology space and evaluating whether specific portfolio investments reduce their PAE exposure.
Question: What is defensive publication and when is it the right choice instead of pursuing a patent?
Answer: Defensive publication is the deliberate disclosure of an invention — through publication in a technical journal, a defensive publication database like IP.com, or other public forum — for the specific purpose of creating prior art that prevents competitors from obtaining patents on the same innovation without the publishing company itself seeking patent protection. Defensive publication is the right choice when a company wants to ensure freedom to operate in a specific technology area by preventing competitor patents, but does not want to incur the prosecution cost and disclosure risk of its own patent application. It is particularly appropriate for process innovations that the company does not want to protect with a patent — because patent prosecution requires public disclosure of the innovation — but that they also do not want a competitor to patent and then enforce against them. The strategic limitation is that defensive publication provides no exclusive rights — it prevents competitor patents but provides no basis for the publishing company to exclude anyone from using the published technology.
Question: How do you build a patent portfolio that is specifically designed to support an eventual acquisition by a strategic buyer?
Answer: Building an acquisition-attractive patent portfolio requires understanding what strategic acquirers in your technology space specifically value in IP assets — which varies by acquirer type and technology area. For technology acquirers in Austin's semiconductor and software sectors, acquisition-attractive portfolios typically feature: broad independent claims that cover the core technical innovations rather than narrow claims easily designed around; active continuation applications demonstrating ongoing portfolio development; coordinated international coverage in the markets relevant to the acquirer's commercial footprint; clean assignment chains with no ownership gaps; and continuation strategy that has adapted to the competitive landscape as it developed rather than remaining static since initial filing. I advise Austin companies preparing for strategic acquisition on portfolio positioning specifically — identifying and addressing gaps that reduce acquisition value and documenting portfolio strengths in formats that communicate clearly to acquirer due diligence teams.
Question: How do I know when my patent portfolio is strong enough to support fundraising?
Answer: Investors evaluate patent portfolios on quality more than quantity — three strong patents with broad, well-drafted claims covering your core technology are more valuable for fundraising than ten narrow patents that competitors can easily design around. The portfolio is fundraising-ready when it covers the specific technical innovations that differentiate your product from existing alternatives, when the claims are broad enough that competitors could not simply modify their products to avoid infringement, when the ownership chain is clean with no gaps in IP assignments from founders and employees, and when you have at least some pending applications showing that the portfolio is actively growing. I conduct pre-fundraising portfolio assessments for Austin startups that provide a candid evaluation of portfolio strength and identify specific improvements that can be made before investor diligence begins.
Question: What is a patent audit and should my company do one?
Answer: A patent audit is a systematic review of your company's IP assets — including granted patents, pending applications, published applications, licensed-in patents, and any IP covered by vendor or partner agreements — to assess the portfolio's current strength, identify gaps in coverage, evaluate maintenance cost versus value for each asset, and develop a forward-looking strategy. A patent audit is particularly valuable before a significant funding round or acquisition, when a company is reassessing its IP strategy after a period of growth or technology evolution, when a new IP strategy is being developed after leadership change, or when preparing for potential licensing or enforcement activity. I provide comprehensive portfolio audits for Austin technology companies at every stage of development.
Answer: There is no magic number — portfolio value comes from strategic coherence and claim quality rather than patent count. A single well-drafted patent with broad claims covering your core technology innovation can provide more meaningful competitive protection than ten narrow patents that competitors can easily design around. That said, a portfolio with depth — multiple related patents covering different aspects of your technology — is significantly more difficult to challenge and provides more complete competitive coverage than any single patent. For seed-stage startups I typically recommend focusing on three to five strategically important patent applications covering the core innovations that differentiate your product, then building portfolio depth through continuation practice as funding allows.
Question: How many patents do I need for my startup to have a meaningful IP position?
Question: What is a patent landscape analysis and when do I need one?
Answer: A patent landscape analysis is a systematic review and mapping of the patent activity in a specific technology area — identifying the major patent holders, the technologies covered, the filing trends over time, the geographic distribution of protection, and the white spaces where meaningful innovations remain unprotected. Patent landscapes are useful before entering a new technology area to understand the competitive IP environment, before making significant R&D investment decisions to assess whether the target innovation space is heavily patented by competitors, before product development to identify freedom to operate concerns early, and before fundraising to understand how your portfolio compares to the competitive landscape. I conduct patent landscape analyses for Austin technology companies preparing for new product development or market entry.
Question: How does patent portfolio management differ for a startup versus an established company?
Answer: For early-stage startups, portfolio management focuses on making high-leverage filing decisions with limited IP budget — identifying the specific innovations that most deserve patent protection, timing filings to coincide with fundraising and product milestones, and planning continuation strategy from the first filing to build portfolio depth over time. For established companies with large existing portfolios, management focuses on systematic maintenance fee cost optimization, identifying which patents are commercially relevant and which can be abandoned, coordinating continuation and divisional prosecution, competitive monitoring for design-around activity, and licensing or enforcement strategy for the most commercially significant patents. I tailor portfolio management services to each client's specific stage and portfolio characteristics.
Question: What is a continuation filing strategy and why does it start with the first application?
Answer: A continuation filing strategy is a deliberate plan for pursuing additional patent claims based on your original application disclosure — before you know exactly which specific claims will be most commercially valuable, you establish the disclosure foundation that supports all possible future claims. This strategy starts with the first application because the original specification is the reservoir from which all future continuation claims must be drawn. Subject matter not disclosed in the original application cannot be added later without losing the original priority date. I draft every original application with the full range of future continuation claims in mind — describing not just the specific product being built today but the broader inventive concept, all variations, alternative implementations, and potential future applications that the original disclosure should support.
Question: What is a patent thicket and how does it affect my product development strategy?
Answer: A patent thicket is a dense concentration of overlapping patent rights in a specific technology area held by multiple different patent owners — creating a situation where any product in that space necessarily practices multiple patents owned by different parties, each requiring a separate license. Patent thickets are common in semiconductor technology, wireless communications, pharmaceutical formulations, and video coding technology. For companies developing products in patent thicket technology areas, freedom to operate analysis is essential — identifying which patents are potentially infringed, assessing their validity, and determining whether licenses are needed from multiple holders. I advise Austin technology companies on navigating patent thicket environments through FTO analysis, design-around strategies, and licensing program assessment.
Question: How do I protect innovations that my engineers develop but which fall outside our core patent strategy?
Answer: Innovations that fall outside your core patent strategy can be valuable without warranting full utility patent prosecution. Options include filing provisional applications on the innovations to preserve priority date while you assess commercial significance, filing defensive publications — publicly disclosing the innovations to create prior art that prevents competitors from patenting them without seeking patent protection yourself, protecting the innovations as trade secrets if they are not easily reverse-engineerable, or simply making the business decision that the innovation does not warrant IP investment. The right approach depends on the innovation's commercial significance, whether competitors are likely to develop the same concept independently, and whether the innovation's value comes from exclusivity or from first-mover advantage.
Question: What is a patent licensing program and how do I build one from my existing portfolio?
Answer: A patent licensing program is a systematic effort to generate revenue from your patent portfolio by licensing patents to companies that practice the claimed inventions. Building a licensing program from an existing portfolio involves assessing which patents have claims that potentially read on competitor or industry products, evaluating the strength and validity risk of those patents, identifying the specific companies whose products may infringe, developing licensing demand positions based on reasonable royalty analysis, and executing outreach through licensing negotiations or litigation. I advise patent holders on licensing program development — providing the technical and legal analysis needed to identify licensable patents and develop reasonable licensing positions before engaging potential licensees.
Question: What is the difference between defensive and offensive patent portfolio strategy?
Answer: An offensive patent portfolio strategy focuses on building IP assets that can be used to generate licensing revenue or to exclude competitors from practicing your innovations — patents that provide positive competitive advantage. A defensive patent portfolio strategy focuses on building IP assets that protect your own freedom to operate and provide leverage against competitor assertions — patents that deter attacks rather than enable them. Most sophisticated technology companies pursue both strategies simultaneously — offensive patents on their most valuable innovations combined with defensive patents that provide cross-licensing leverage in competitor disputes. The right balance between offensive and defensive portfolio building depends on the company's competitive position, the density of the relevant patent landscape, and the resources available for portfolio development.
Question: How do I evaluate whether to buy a patent that is for sale?
Answer: Acquiring a patent through purchase rather than prosecution can be a cost-effective way to build portfolio strength quickly — particularly for technologies where existing patents provide the needed protection without the time and cost of original prosecution. Evaluating a patent for acquisition requires assessing the claim scope and breadth to determine what the patent actually protects, the prosecution history for estoppel issues that limit effective scope beyond the claim face, the prior art validity risk to assess whether the patent could be challenged, the patent's relevance to your specific competitive context and product portfolio, the remaining patent term and how many years of useful protection remain, and the asking price relative to the commercial value of the protection obtained. I advise clients on patent acquisition due diligence with the same technical and legal rigor I apply to developing their own portfolio.
Question: What is an IP holding company and should I use one for my patent portfolio?
Answer: An IP holding company is a separate legal entity that holds patents and other IP assets distinct from the operating company that practices the technology. Potential advantages of the IP holding company structure include liability protection for IP assets, potential tax advantages depending on the jurisdiction structure, simplified IP transfer in transactions, and management flexibility in complex corporate structures. Potential disadvantages include complexity in maintaining the structure, transfer pricing issues in inter-company licensing arrangements, and the additional legal and administrative costs of maintaining a separate entity. The IP holding company structure is most commonly used by established companies with large patent portfolios and sophisticated corporate structures — for most early-stage startups the additional complexity is not justified by the benefits. I advise clients on IP holding company structures in the context of their overall corporate and tax planning.
Question: How does the age of my patents affect their commercial value?
Answer: Patent age affects commercial value in multiple ways depending on the technology area and how the technology has evolved. A 15-year-old patent covering foundational semiconductor memory architecture may retain significant commercial value if the technology is still widely practiced and the claims are broad enough to read on current implementations. A 15-year-old software patent may have diminished value if the technology landscape has moved on entirely. Remaining patent term directly affects how many more years of exclusivity the patent can provide — a patent with 2 years remaining has much less licensing leverage than one with 15 years remaining. I assess patent portfolio value with specific attention to the relationship between claim scope, technology relevance, and remaining term for each significant patent in the portfolio.
Question: What is a patent portfolio gap analysis and how does it improve competitive positioning?
Answer: A patent portfolio gap analysis compares your company's existing patent coverage against the full technical scope of your commercial products and technology roadmap — identifying areas where innovations are commercially active but not adequately protected by your current patents. Gaps can arise from several sources: innovations developed after your initial patent filings that have not been separately protected; technical aspects of your products that were described in original specifications but never claimed in issued patents; continuation application opportunities that were not pursued; and adjacent technology areas that competitive developments have made more strategically important than originally anticipated. For Austin technology companies approaching fundraising or planning commercial expansion, a portfolio gap analysis identifies specific filing opportunities that would strengthen the portfolio's strategic coherence before the company's IP position is scrutinized in due diligence or competitive intelligence gathering.
Question: What is a patent watch service and why does every serious IP portfolio need one?
Answer: A patent watch service — also called a patent monitoring or alerting service — systematically tracks new patent publications and grants in specified technology areas or from specified competitors, alerting the subscriber when relevant new filings emerge. Patent watches are essential portfolio management tools because the competitive patent landscape changes continuously — competitors file new applications that could affect your freedom to operate, create new blocking positions, or signal new product development directions that warrant competitive response. Without systematic monitoring, new competitor patents can emerge and become active infringement risks before the company is aware of them. I provide patent watch services as a component of fractional IP counsel engagements — tracking new filings in client technology spaces and translating patent monitoring results into specific strategic recommendations rather than simply forwarding raw alerts that require legal interpretation.
Question: What is a patent portfolio rationalization and when should a company do one?
Answer: Patent portfolio rationalization is a systematic process of evaluating every asset in a patent portfolio against defined commercial relevance and cost-benefit criteria — making deliberate decisions about which patents to maintain, which to license, which to sell, and which to abandon. Companies should consider portfolio rationalization when the portfolio has grown large through years of active prosecution without systematic pruning, when the company's technology focus has shifted significantly from the technology covered by older patents, when maintenance fee costs are consuming a significant portion of the IP budget and crowding out new filing investments, or when preparing for a transaction where a clean, coherent portfolio is more valuable than a large but unfocused one. Portfolio rationalization is not about reducing IP investment — it is about concentrating IP investment in assets that provide genuine competitive and commercial value rather than maintaining assets primarily for the appearance of portfolio size.
Question: How does a patent portfolio contribute to a company's valuation at Series B and beyond?
Answer: At Series B and beyond, Austin startup investors expect to see a patent portfolio that demonstrates not just filing activity but strategic coherence — patents and pending applications that work together to protect the company's core competitive position and that reflect a deliberate portfolio building strategy rather than ad hoc individual filings. Specific portfolio characteristics that contribute positively to Series B valuation include: continuation applications that show active portfolio expansion as the technology and competitive landscape evolve; granted patents with broad independent claims that cover commercially relevant implementations of the core technology; coordination between US and international applications that reflects deliberate market prioritization; clean IP assignment chains with no ownership gaps; and absence of significant known FTO risks. I help Austin companies approaching Series B develop the portfolio narratives — and address the portfolio gaps — that present their IP position as a genuine competitive asset in investor diligence.
Question: What is a competitive patent analysis and how does it inform portfolio strategy?
Answer: A competitive patent analysis is a systematic review of the patent portfolios of your most significant competitors — examining what technology they are protecting, where their coverage is strong, where gaps exist, and what their recent filing activity suggests about their product development direction. Competitive patent analysis informs portfolio strategy in several important ways: identifying technology areas where competitors have strong coverage that limits your freedom to operate, allowing proactive FTO assessment before product development investment; identifying areas where competitors lack coverage that represent white space opportunities for your own portfolio development; identifying competitor continuation filing strategies that signal how they plan to extend their coverage; and identifying competitors' filing patterns in their headquarters countries before US filings are made — providing advance intelligence on competitive product development. I conduct competitive patent analyses for Austin technology companies as a component of portfolio strategy development and as part of fractional IP counsel engagements.
Question: What is a patent portfolio for M&A defense and how do I build one?
Answer: A defensive M&A patent portfolio is a collection of patents specifically valued for their ability to deter unwanted acquisition attempts, provide cross-licensing leverage in competitive disputes, and support negotiating position in any transaction — rather than primarily for their licensing revenue potential or competitive exclusion value. Building a defensive portfolio involves identifying the technology areas where potential acquirers or competitors have significant commercial exposure; filing patent applications that cover technology in those areas where your innovations are novel and non-obvious; pursuing broad independent claims that create maximum coverage and maximum cross-licensing value; maintaining active continuation applications that can be directed at emerging competitive products; and ensuring that the portfolio is assigned and documented in ways that would transfer cleanly to any successor entity. For Austin technology companies in markets with active M&A activity — semiconductor, software, and health technology — a robust defensive patent portfolio is a strategic asset that affects not just day-to-day competitive positioning but the company's ability to control its own transaction destiny.
Maintenance Fee Management And Cost Optimization
US utility patents require maintenance fees paid to the USPTO at 3.5 7.5 and 11.5 years after grant to keep them in force. Missing a maintenance fee results in patent expiration. For companies with large portfolios these fees add up significantly — systematic maintenance fee management is an important cost control and strategic tool.
As part of portfolio management I track maintenance fee deadlines for all client patents flag upcoming deadlines in advance and advise on which patents are worth maintaining and which can be strategically abandoned to reduce costs. Abandoned patents enter the public domain freeing competitors to use that technology — which is sometimes strategically desirable and sometimes not. These decisions require both legal and technical judgment about the ongoing value of specific patents.
