Patents may be highly valuable. Producing them is costly, as is maintaining and extending them. However, on the level of individual patents, the actual value may be difficult to assess.
Protection of intellectual property: which patents to protect?
Patents exist that can prevent competitors from copying your products. Such patents enable your company to generate substantial profits and grow rapidly.
These patents are definitely valuable. Nevertheless, when, for example, a competitor finds a way to copy your products without violating the patents, the patents in question may suddenly become worthless.
According to an article at cfo.com, a researcher at MIT has identified an easy measure for evaluating the protection a patent provides to a company.
A surprisingly simple solution
Look at the first patent claim. The fewer words it contains, the greater the protection provided. What matters is the number of words in the patent application which define the scope of the invention.
Here is a hypothetical example. If a patent covers "bicycles", it is very broad. If it covers "women's bicycles", it is narrower. If it covers "women's bicycles with training wheels", it is narrower still. So basically the more words there are in a patent application, the narrower the protection it offers.
Reviewing every patent in a portfolio can be extremely time consuming if the list is long. Counting words is thus a good rule of thumb. In English, typical first claims average around 120 words and the vast majority contain fewer than 375. The advice, therefore, is to spend more time examining the shortest first claims.
-jk-