You file a patent application because R&D built something new. You file another because the roadmap says version two is coming. You aim for protection in the US because that’s where the market is supposed to be. Every decision makes sense from inside your own company.
Five years later, your US patent has not granted, the patent office found some obscure document that they say makes your application obvious. The examiner is insisting that you limit the claims to something that the US market does not care about. The world has turned in a way that you didn’t anticipate and now the world you built for is not there.
This is the inside-view trap. You built your plan from what you could see from the inside. You never asked what actually happens to patents like yours, filed by companies at your stage, in your sector.
One fix is unglamorous: base rates. Working from a base rate means that you force yourself to look from the outside view to balance what you see from the inside. What percentage of patents in your technology area get licensed? What percentage of patent application even get granted?
The next time you are advised to file a patent application keep the base rate that only about 50% of patent applications in the US are granted to become patents. Does that base rate change your inside-view of whether you should file at all?
The inside view tells you what you have. The outside view tells you how it fits the world. A successful IP strategy is built on knowing both.
