Community Forum – Patent Related Expenses

How much do you spend on patent related expenses?

We want to benchmark patent related expenses as a percentage of annual revenue for other companies. Patent related expenses include freedom to operate research, legal fees, patent application preparation, filing fees, prosecution fees, and annuities/maintenance fees. We refer to this ratio (annual patent expenses / annual revenue) as “patent intensity”. Does your company have a different way to measure this? If so, what is your definition? Please include your industry with your answer. – Product Development Manager, Global CPG Company

Community Responses

High Tech Industry​
The ratio for us is approximately 1%. 

Luc Adriaenssens, SVP of technology, CommScope (a leading provider of telecom infrastructure solutions)​
Patent intensity is a good metric in my opinion.  Another metric to consider is number of patents per engineer/scientist in each major business unit.  This provides a good metric to assess where you are doing true innovative R&D versus more routine engineering or configuration.

Note also that a lot can be done in the area of cost optimization, including firm selection, international filing strategy, portfolio pruning, etc.  Active management will obviously lower the patent intensity ratio.

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