How to Decide Which Patents to Maintain: A Data-Driven Approach to Portfolio Pruning

For many IP teams, a point comes where the focus shifts from filling patents to deciding which assets justify continued investment. Maintenance fees/annuities deadlines create recurring decision points, and without structured analysis, portfolio pruning often becomes reactive, rushed, or overly conservative.

Traditional portfolio reviews rely on manual spreadsheet audits and subjective judgment. But meaningful feedback requires data-backed insight into enforcement potential and strategic alignment.

Here’s how a structured, AI-driven approach with Patlytics helps organizations decide which patents to maintain and which to let lapse.

1. Identify Revenue Drivers with Infringement Heatmaps

Patents with real enforcement or licensing potential typically justify continued maintenance. Those without commercial alignment may not.

Using Infringement Portfolio Heatmaps on the Patlytics platform, teams can analyze up to 250 patents at once to evaluate how claims read against competitor products. The system automatically scans publicly available materials for evidence of use and assigns High, Medium, or Low read likelihood scores to each patent-product pairing.

This allows IP leaders to:

• Surface patents with licensing potential
• Prioritize assets aligned with current market activity
• Exclude existing partners using custom blocklists
• Focus on untapped enforcement opportunities

Using this tool, teams can include insights into commercial relevance in their decisions as to whether to maintain an asset.

2. Create a Structured Pruning Workflow

Dedicated Project Workspaces allow in-house teams to organize maintenance review cycles separately from active prosecution or litigation matters. This structured environment ensures that pruning decisions are documented and repeatable.

Within these workspaces:

• Intelligent Classification clusters patents by technology area
• Assets can be analyzed against relevant product segments
• Teams can sort patents by market alignment or product column
• Strategic notes can be saved alongside supporting evidence

This replaces fragmented spreadsheet tracking with a unified portfolio review process.

3. Improve Strategically Important Patents

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Teams can develop strategies to improve their coverage for strategically important inventions. One possible path would be to draft a continuation application if there is still a pending family member.

Proactive Continuation Strategy

Using a secure unpublished workflow, draft continuations can be analyzed against competitor products before filing. This enables teams to strengthen claim scope before public exposure.

Iterative Claim Refinement

Infringement heatmaps can be run directly against draft claims, allowing practitioners to adjust language.

Statutory Health Checks

Section 112 analysis of a draft helps identify written description or enablement gaps before the application is finalized. Addressing any issues early reduces downstream prosecution risk.

By taking a data-first approach, a portfolio can be enhanced. 

The Strategic ROI Advantage

Maintenance fee decisions should reflect more than historical filing activity.

By consolidating infringement potential and strategic improvement pathways into a single workflow, IP teams can come up with clear, data-backed recommendations.

Some firms report significant reductions in manual review time by replacing spreadsheet-driven audits with structured portfolio analysis. More importantly, leadership gains visibility into which assets:

• Drive potential revenue
• Carry manageable risk
• Support long-term enforcement strategy
• Justify continued maintenance investment

The goal is not simply to cut costs. It is to ensure that every maintenance dollar supports a defensible, commercially relevant asset. In today’s environment, portfolio pruning is an essential part of IP strategy.

To learn more about how Patlytics supports the entire patent lifecycle, book a demo today.