Companies are recognizing patents are valuable corporate assets.
Through a concept called strategic patent management, companies are figuring out how to turn patents into hard cash or truly valuable assets, Kuester said. Also called patent mining or strategic intellectual property management, the concept goes beyond patents to other types of intellectual property. But the area of patents has received much of the attention recently focused on strategic IP management. Rather than letting patents act solely as a drain on resources through maintenance fees, some companies are shifting the focus to making patents and other intellectual property produce real value through licensing and recovering from infringers, Kuester said. BellSouth Corp. also is putting its intellectual property to work.