Answers · Invention & Disclosures
What is invention harvesting and how do you run a session?
Updated June 2026
The short answer
Invention harvesting is a structured, facilitated process for extracting patentable inventions that already exist in your engineers' heads and project work but were never documented. Run well, a focused harvesting engagement surfaces far more invention disclosures than many engineering organizations collect organically in a year.
The premise is that invention capture fails at the documentation step, not the inventing step. Most companies have far more patentable work than their disclosure pipeline ever sees. Harvesting attacks the capture step directly: trained facilitators interview engineers, recognize the patentable material in real time, and draft the disclosures themselves.
Harvesting versus suggestion boxes and brainstorms
Harvesting is distinct from two things it gets confused with. Idea-management software (the corporate suggestion box) waits passively for engineers to recognize and write up their own inventions, which is precisely the step that fails. Invention-generation workshops aim at the future: they create new inventions against a chosen target, such as a competitor's patent or an emerging market. Harvesting points backward and inward, at inventions your team has already made in the course of building products.
We have facilitated invention sessions for more than 25 years across more than 50 technology sectors, and our team members are named inventors on more than 3,000 patents. The consistent finding is that the inventions are already there. What companies lack is a reliable way to get them out of heads and into documents counsel can act on.
How a session actually runs
Preparation matters as much as the day itself. We scope a technical area, review the product line, roadmap, and prior filings, and select four to eight engineers who are close to the work. Small groups keep everyone talking; large ones let inventors hide.
The session itself is a structured interview, not a presentation. The facilitator works through prompts designed to surface invention: the hardest problems solved recently, the workarounds nobody documented, the design choices where obvious alternatives were rejected, the things a competitor would struggle to copy. As engineers talk, the facilitator recognizes patentable material in real time and a scribe captures it in a claim-aware structure: problem, mechanism, novelty, alternatives. The engineers never write anything.
Afterward comes triage and drafting. The raw capture becomes a prioritized concept list scored for business value, and the strongest concepts become full business-grade disclosures, ready for your patent counsel to draft applications from.
What good output looks like
Our ipScan sessions reliably surface documented disclosures in volume. One Fortune 500 program produced roughly 150 invention concepts and more than 80 patent applications, with a 98 percent issuance rate. Because the disclosures arrive with prior art context and alternative embodiments already worked out, clients also see prosecution move faster: in our experience strong disclosures can cut prosecution time by 30 to 40 percent.
Not everything harvested should be filed. A healthy program routes concepts into filings, trade secret protection, defensive publications, and holds, which is the review committee's job rather than the facilitator's.
Related questions
How is harvesting different from a brainstorm?
A brainstorm generates ideas and usually leaves them on sticky notes. Harvesting extracts inventions that already exist and documents them to a standard counsel can file from. Capture discipline is the difference: a session that produces nothing your attorney can use has produced nothing.
How many engineers should attend a session?
Four to eight per session works best. The group needs enough overlap to build on each other's work and enough intimacy that quiet engineers talk. Larger organizations run multiple sessions by team or technology area.
Does our patent attorney need to be in the room?
Welcome, but as an observer. The session is for generating and capturing; patentability review happens afterward, on the triaged output. We cover the division of labor in a separate answer on who should facilitate.
Do remote sessions work?
Yes. Video sessions with disciplined capture run nearly as well as in-person ones, and they make it practical to include engineers across sites. Half-day blocks across two days often beat one long remote day.
What happens to concepts we choose not to file?
They still have value. Some become trade secrets, some become defensive publications that block competitors from patenting the same thing, and some go on hold for re-review as the market moves.
See what a day of harvesting yields
Bring us one product team and one technical area. We will scope a session, and you can judge the program on what it captures. The discovery call is 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.