BlueIron IP
Reading the portfolio
A 90-day assessment that reads your portfolio the way an IP-backed lender does. Which patents cover what you sell, which ones you can stop paying for, and whether the chain of title holds.
Thirty minutes with Russ Krajec. No preparation needed.
Each one made sense on the day it was filed. Nobody was asked to look at them together, so the portfolio is the sum of thirty separate decisions.
Does it cover a product earning revenue today, and would it hold up if challenged? A lender reads for leverage, not for inventive merit. Most patents do not pass.
Every U.S. patent owes three renewal fees over its life, plus foreign annuities. Letting the dead weight lapse funds the work on the ones that matter.
Built backward from the lender's checklist, the three become collateral, and the company gains capital that costs no equity.
Two reads
Both are legitimate. Most companies have only ever received the first. The second is what an acquirer's counsel, a venture lender, and an IP-backed lender all run, and its questions are knowable in advance.
The function
The work that sits above your patent attorneys. They keep drafting. This decides what they draft, and why.
Which products are protected, where the thin spots are, and which patents cover technology the company no longer sells.
Which patents to keep paying for, which to let go, and where that money goes instead.
Which inventions become patents, which competitors and partners they are aimed at, and the business reason for each.
The point of novelty, the competitive target, and why the application matters, so counsel drafts with precision.
Progress against the lender's checklist, so the portfolio matures toward a financeable asset instead of drifting.
When an acquirer or lender asks which patents you would enforce, the answer is already in the file.
The starting point
Most engagements begin here. You finish with a written position you can defend in any room, whether or not you continue with BlueIron. Ongoing Fractional CIPO retainers start at $5,000 a month pre-revenue and $10,000 a month at growth stage.
Every patent and application, who owns it, what it costs to keep, and what it covers against current products.
Each patent family scored on revenue mapping, strength, detectability, remaining life, and resale value.
Where you are protected, where competitors could walk through, and what a 2029 buyer would see.
What to keep, stop, and add over the next 12 to 24 months, what it costs, and what the portfolio could borrow against once the work is done.
Russ Krajec · PrincipalWho runs it
“Patents are not the goal. You want what patents make possible.”
Russ has sat in every chair at the table: the engineer whose invention got a weak patent, the attorney drafting them, the startup executive deciding what to spend, and the lender deciding whether the portfolio was worth lending against. That last chair is the one most patent advisors have never occupied.
In his words
Next step
Bring the number of patents you hold and what the next year looks like. You will hear on the call whether the portfolio is likely to pass an underwriting read today, and whether the assessment is worth doing.