Why is So Little Attention Focused on Patent Economics?

I have no doubt that the answer to the title question is that the analysis is too difficult. If a company could find a close to optimal way of harvesting inventions from its troops and gainning patent protection for these inventions, the advantage it would thereby gain would be so great that, depending on the field, it could easily put out of business all of its competitors. 

As manufacturing becomes easier and represents a smaller and smaller portion of national product, manufacturing plants are bound to represent a smaller portion of the total wealth of the nation. What part of the pie is bound to grow?? Energy reserves are a likely candidate. We may also note that energy reserves may include land for growing biofuel. Land may increas in value as manufacturing plants take up a smaller portion of the pie. I also feel that patent rights are bound to increase as part of the pie, as other assets lose value by comparison. For manufacturing enterprises the message should be clear: Patent or Die. Maytag, which was not long ago purchased by Whirlpool for a relatively small amount, was patent poor. If Maytag had invested in a patent portfolio like Samsung and LG did, it might very well be alive today. 

In any event, with patents becoming so important, why is it that there is so little written on how a company can optimize its strategy for obtaining the maximum valued patent portfolio at the minimum price? I believe that a very important part of the reason is that it is just so difficult to analyze. Another part of the issue, is how a company can get the most out of its portfolio, once the patents are obtained. Again, this is very tough to analyze. In fact, we may be reduced to relying on heuristics to come up with any meaningful guidance. 

We can at least start by breaking up the problem into a progression, and examining each part individually:

1. Originating Inventions.

2. Recognizing Inventions.

3. Gaining patent protection for inventions.

4. Applying and profiting from patents, after patent grant.

I will make a general observation about these steps: In each step it pays to understand a little something about the patent system. And it helps to have a close relationship between the various people involved.

This perhaps can give insight into why large companies do not completely dominate the world. Big companies have huge advantages, but I believe that when it comes to developing a valuable patent portfolio, they also have huge disadvantages. We will explore this further in further posts.