IP Portfolio Management

The question

Intellectual property rarely arrives as a planned portfolio. Trademarks are filed when a product launches, patents when a project reaches a milestone, domain names when a campaign needs one. After a few years you own dozens or hundreds of rights in different countries, with different owners of record, different renewal cycles and different costs.

The questions that follow are practical. What do we actually own, and where? Which rights expire this year, and what will it cost to keep them? Which registrations still protect something we sell, and which protect a product that was discontinued? Where do we sell without protection? And what is the portfolio worth when an investor or buyer asks?

Missing a deadline can mean the loss of a right, and paying for rights nobody uses is a quiet cost. Both are avoidable with a managed portfolio.

Clients typically approach us after an acquisition that brought in unfamiliar rights, when an in-house colleague who kept the spreadsheet leaves, when several outside firms hold parts of the portfolio, or ahead of a funding round or sale that will require a complete list.

Our approach

We treat portfolio management as an ongoing service, not a one-off audit. It follows the life of each right, from filing to renewal or abandonment, as described in IP lifecycle management.

First we build the register. We collect your rights, check them against the official registers and record owner, status, jurisdictions, classes and next deadlines. Our portfolio, renewals and deadlines function shows the result as a map, a rights chart or a list, with jurisdiction coverage, spread across Nice classes and a renewal timeline with costs.

Then we follow the deadlines. Dates are docketed with escalating reminders, and correspondence from IP offices is recognised and linked to the right concerned. Every computed date is confirmed by a person before it is relied on. Managing your IP deadlines explains what these dates are and what is at stake.

Renewals are prepared in batches per client. For each right you see the cost estimate from our IP cost estimator and instruct us to renew, abandon, oppose or extend. You can give those instructions through a secure link or in the client portal, where you also see the map of your rights, review watch results and follow your matters. Renewal management for IP portfolios covers the legal side of these decisions.

Finally, we review the portfolio against your business: gaps in markets you serve, classes that no longer match your products, evidence of use that is missing, and rights that cost more than they protect. Where a valuation is needed, how to value an IP portfolio sets out the methods.

Where the attorney decides is worth stating plainly. The system proposes dates, costs and candidate gaps. The attorney confirms every computed date, judges whether a missing class is a real risk, and recommends whether to renew, abandon, oppose or extend. You make the final decision on each right.

What you get

• A complete, verified register of your trademarks, designs, domain names and patents, plus a register of copyright works if you want one.
• A portfolio view in the client portal: map, rights chart, list and renewal timeline.
• Deadline monitoring with confirmed dates and escalating reminders.
• Renewal proposals with cost estimates, and a record of your instructions.
• A periodic review with recommendations: renew, abandon, extend into new jurisdictions, or collect proof of use.
• Material for due diligence, funding rounds or a valuation, drawn from the same register.

Nothing is filed, paid or abandoned without your instruction and an attorney's sign-off.

A short scenario: a Mechelen manufacturer asks us to take over a portfolio of 40 trademarks and 6 patent families. In the first review we find three trademarks registered in the name of a former subsidiary, two classes in which the company holds no protection for products it launched last year, and four registrations covering products discontinued years ago. The proposals that follow are concrete: record the change of owner, file for the missing classes, and let the four old registrations lapse at their next renewal.

Next step

Send us a list of what you have, in whatever form it exists, even a spreadsheet or a folder of certificates. We take it from there and will tell you what is missing.

Schedule a meeting to discuss how we can take over the monitoring.