Don’t Waste Money on Too Many Patent Claims, Part IV

In part I of this series, we discussed a common misconception among some startup executives, that large numbers of patent claims are good. We concluded that large numbers of patent claims don’t add much value.

In part II, we pointed out just how much a large number of patent claims can cost you in excess claim fees. Part III expanded on this by pointing out you might have to spend even more money to get those excess claims examined in a divisional patent application.

What are my suggestions?

Venture capitalists and investors: Discourage the companies you invest in from filing patent applications with excess claims. Tell them to focus their claims down to the maximum number they can get without an excess claim fee. And if other VCs tell you you’re doing it wrong by filing a number of claims at or below the limit? Let them waste money and lower their ROI.

Startup executives and small business owners: If your investors want you to file a large number of claims in your patent application, tell them you can better spend those hundreds or thousands of dollars on something else. Like another patent application, which would likely give you much more value than extra dependent claims on some narrow aspect of your current application.

Anyone: if your patent attorney tells you that you should file an application with scores or hundreds of claims, ask him how much he’ll charge to draft each one of those claims. And how much he’ll charge to file a divisional application later.

Then contact us and we’ll see if we can help you get the patent coverage you need with high quality and reasonable rates.