Quality over Quantity: Strategies for Improving the Return on Your Patents

摘要

When executives, engineers, and scientists look proudly at their patent display walls, they see achievement, but they also could be looking at gold. For many companies, their patents are a potential source of significant revenues that has remained untapped simply because the patents have not been evaluated, tested, or revised before being issued by the patent office. According to Dr. Bernie Meyerson, an IBM Fellow, "In the 1960s, a dollar of semiconductor R&D spending would generate $40 in revenue. Now it returns just $6." This fact is leading many companies to look for alternatives, namely their patent portfolios, to generate more revenue from their inventions.