Annuity Payment Services Make Patent Portfolio Management Easier

Once you start accumulating multiple patents, or you start filing your patents in multiple countries, the process of managing the required renewal payments becomes a real headache. Renewal laws around the world are complicated and the deadlines for renewing patents are different in each country. When you are filing in three or four countries or more, it quickly becomes a nightmare to keep track of everything. Even the most organized manager is apt to miss a critical date and incur late fees, or worse, risk losing their patent all together. As our patent portfolio grew, we decided the risk was too great and we engaged an annuity management service provider to help us keep track of our annuity payments worldwide.

The solution we chose was MaxVal’s Annuity Payer, but there are many others out there that offer similar services. One of the real benefits of a service like this is that it saves you time. We would rather be spending our time focused on our core design and engineering business, not administrative tasks like managing complicated calendars and wiring money to various countries.  Even though we pay a fee for this service, in the long run, it saves us money. Trying to track the different legal requirements, create translations, and prepare payments would cost us way more in legal fees and other service fees than the $150 to $200 we pay per filing using this service.

Here’s how it works. You upload your patent portfolio into their system, and they calculate the various deadlines for annuity payments by country and provide a quote of the associated fees. As deadlines approach, you are sent reminders and have the ability to decide which renewals you wish to make. We can easily project out various payments by month or by quarter, which helps us manage our budget. They take care of completing the renewal filing and sending the payments to each agency, we just authorize them to make a wire transfer from our bank account, although you could also pay by credit card if you wish. It is very simple and easy to manage. As we head out for summer vacation, knowing we won’t miss a critical deadline on one of our patents means we can enjoy that Mai Tai on the beach even more. Aloha!

If you are interested in learning more about Invaluable Inventions’ patent portfolio or our consulting services to help entrepreneurs manage the patent process, contact me at kemaal@invaluableinventions.com.