An efficient management of your patent portfolios registered in China helps you to quickly find information and to keep your patent portfolio well organized. A patent portfolio can be a significant factor of a company’s value and your success in China, but the portfolio should have the same degree of attention as any other part of the company to maintain its relevance and profitability. Patent portfolio management initially comprises the development of application strategies and a subsequent strategic filing of applications abroad. As China patent lawyers, we have extensive experience in advising patent portfolio management matter in China. Below we introduce some basic concepts we China patent portfolio management. You can do some basic comparison of China patent portfolio management with your own country.

The true value of patents often lies in the united portfolio and rarely in one single patent family. A good patent portfolio consists of numerous patent families in order to spread the risk of the individual patent family and to reduce the company’s dependency of the single patent. Moreover, a larger part of the market can often be controlled, either by excluding competitors or by providing access to the market in form of licenses/cross-licenses and collaborations.

Management of patent portfolios

Regardless the size of the patent portfolio, it should regularly and systematically be evaluated, and the resources bound should be correlated with the company strategy and market development.

Perhaps some patent families should be abandoned or reduced, whereas a stronger IP position may be required to penetrate or maintain a position on a specific market.

Your patent portfolio will be designed in accordance with your products and research or development projects and technologies as well as with the object to systematically protect your products and technologies as well as to systematically block competitors. 

Overview of patent portfolio management

Evaluation of a patent portfolio requires a thorough overview of all patent families and should at least consider the following aspects of the patent families:

•  Relevance to products and technology
•  Diversity
•  Age and duration in relation to market introduction and product life-cycle
•  Geographical coverage
•  Economy

We contribute with information and graphic presentations of your patent portfolios, in order to illustrate the above in the best possible way.

On demand, we build databases for patent management or we manage such databases for you to make sure that you can access information like the following at any time: Which invention is protected in which countries? What is the status of the respective protection rights? What is the extent of protection of the respective patents in different countries? What costs did a certain patent family generate so far? Which inventors are involved in which protection rights? or Which citations regarding a certain patent family in the different examination processes were issued so far?

The process of patent portfolio management

We also offer to facilitate the process and ask the questions based on our experience and proven to be essential for clarification and overview. Among the most pertinent questions are:

•  Do you still have IP-rights covering business areas no longer relevant?
•  Do you have business areas, which lack IP coverage?
•  Would it make sense to reduce the number of countries for one or more IP-families?
•  Do new or old competitors give any reasons to change your IP-strategy?
•  Have you received information relevant to the validity of your rights?
•  Can parts of your portfolio create a basis for license agreements or collaborations?
•  Have competitors started to patent on your market or technology?

Furthermore, we manage overview lists regarding your patent portfolio and provide you with overviews of business plans and investors, manage cost statements according to patent families for your finance division or manage and update your address lists, for example regarding inventors which left your company but who might have to be contacted in future, e.g. because of release regulations.

Contact our China patent lawyers

Please contact one of our attorneys the next time you reconsider your portfolio. We can give you the best and simplest possible overview of your portfolio as the best platform for you to make further decisions regarding your patent portfolio management.