Answers · Audits & Portfolio Pruning
How often should we review our patent portfolio?
Updated June 2026
The short answer
Run a full strategic review once a year, and make keep-or-lapse decisions at every maintenance-fee window, which in the US falls at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after each patent's grant. Companies in active competitive situations add a lighter quarterly scan of new competitor filings.
The annual review is the strategy layer; the fee-window decisions are the budget layer. Most portfolio waste comes from running neither and letting fees pay themselves by default.
The annual review
Once a year, refresh the product-to-patent map, rescore the portfolio against the four standing questions (product coverage, competitor read, licensing potential, white-space value), and reconcile the result with next year's filing budget. The annual cadence matches the rhythm of the things that change the answers: product roadmaps, competitor releases, and budget cycles. Timing it a quarter before budget season means the review's conclusions actually shape the spend.
Keep the meeting small and cross-functional: IP, R&D, and finance, ideally with the same scoring sheet every year so trends are visible. A portfolio review that produces three lists, defend, monetize, prune, with owners and dates, is working. One that produces a deck and no decisions is theater.
Fee-window decisions, continuously
Maintenance deadlines do not wait for the annual meeting; they arrive on each patent's own clock all year long. The mechanism that keeps this manageable is a standing rule: no second or third stage US fee, and no foreign annuity in a marginal jurisdiction, gets paid without checking the asset's tier from the last annual review. If the tier is current, the decision takes a minute. If the asset was borderline, the window forces the question while saying no still saves money.
This is also where the escalating fee structure works in your favor: the USPTO schedule roughly doubles at each stage precisely so that aging, low-value patents present three natural exits.
Event-driven reviews
Some events justify an out-of-cycle review regardless of the calendar. Before a fundraise or sale process, because investors and acquirers will diligence the portfolio and surprises found by their side cost more than surprises found by yours. After an acquisition, because inherited assets need mapping into your tiers. When a competitor enters your core space or a major product line is discontinued, because both move large blocks of the portfolio between tiers at once. And ahead of any litigation or licensing campaign, where counsel will need the strongest assets identified.
A useful pattern from our engagement work: treat the event-driven review as a delta against the last annual scoring rather than a fresh start. It is faster, and the comparison itself is informative.
Related questions
Is an annual review overkill for a small portfolio?
Under roughly 20 families, fold the review into annual planning rather than running a separate exercise: an afternoon with the product map and the fee calendar covers it. The fee-window discipline still applies at any size, because the third-stage fee costs the same whether you own ten patents or ten thousand.
Who should be in the room?
IP or whoever owns the docket, an R&D leader who knows the roadmap, and a finance owner of the budget. Outside counsel can advise on legal status questions, but the keep-or-lapse call is a business decision the company should own.
What data should we prepare?
A docket export with family relationships and upcoming fee deadlines, the current product list, competitor filing activity in your classes, and forward citations on your assets. The first year takes effort to assemble; every year after is an update.
How long does the annual review take?
For a few hundred families with the data assembled, commonly a few weeks of analysis and a half-day decision session. A first-ever review runs longer because the inventory itself usually needs cleaning, which is the audit work described in our portfolio audit guide.
Put the review on rails
We can build the scoring framework and first-year baseline so your team can run the annual cycle in-house afterward. Discovery calls are free.
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ipCapital Group is a consultancy, not a law firm, and nothing on this page is legal advice. Dollar figures on this page are typical market ranges for professional IP services, drawn from published sources and industry experience across a variety of providers. They are not an ipCG quote or rate card; every ipCG engagement is individually scoped and priced. See how our pricing works.