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In the recent episode of Talk IP to me, host David Breitenbach talks with Bas Albers, an IP manager who has helped close to twenty companies build or realign their patent management. He has worked with SMEs and large enterprises and created Patent Cockpit, a system designed to make IP data understandable for everyone involved in strategic decisions. This blog shares some of the highlights from the podcast but for the full insights check the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcast or Youtube.
Together they talk about building a patent strategy that stays aligned with products, business goals, and reality, even when things change fast. He breaks this down into a practical approach you can follow in five steps.
Bas has been developing patent management systems for more than twenty years. In almost every company he entered, he found the same pattern. Ideas were strong, but assumptions about the patents stayed frozen in time.
As he explains:
“I always see the same problems. Products move on, ideas evolve, but the assumptions about the patents never change.”
For Bas, IP management is not just a technical discipline. It is about uncovering what exists, what has changed, and what still matters.
Bas always starts with the same principle: understand reality before making decisions.
“You first need to know what is really protected.”
Most companies rely on scattered knowledge. Some keep informal Friday afternoon updates. Others have partial spreadsheets. So Bas begins by mapping what patents cover, what products look like, and what the roadmap contains. After that he evaluates external risks.
“Do we have freedom to operate? Do we know what we have developed? What is in the pipeline?”
The biggest issue Bas encounters is a mismatch between assumptions and the actual scope of patents. In many SMEs the CEO, CTO, or head of R&D handles patents casually. They often believe a patent remains what it was originally conceived to be, even though prosecution changes its scope.
Bas explains the root problem clearly:
“They still have this old idea of what the patent is, but in the end it is quite different”
Meanwhile products move in their own direction and quickly drift away from the patent’s protected concept. He also points out that management struggles to see the value because the benefits are difficult to quantify.
“Patents are very often seen as expenses. They don’t see anything coming back.”
Yet even the simplest patent provides real business benefit by preventing direct copying.
“Copying is easy. If they cannot copy you, they have to invest in developing their own solution.”
When Bas enters a new company, he often faces teams who believe they have a strong portfolio because their patent attorney is “a nice guy.” But without ways to prove infringement, the value disappears.
“Patent best ever, but you cannot prove that somebody is using it. In fact, it’s useless.”
A key part of Bas’s job is helping teams pick filings that matter. Most companies have more ideas than they can afford to patent, so he filters the ones that bring visible, provable, customer facing advantages. If the value cannot be seen or measured, he challenges the filing:
“It’s great having this patent in all the big countries, but what does it bring us?”
Once you know which ideas are worth protecting, the next challenge is making sure everyone in the company actually understands what is protected and why.
Although evaluating patents is straightforward, understanding products is the real challenge. Product knowledge lives only inside people’s heads. Bas explains that IP managers must translate complex claims into simple language.
“If I show a patent claim, nobody understands. But if I say, this protects the small screw that adjusts the height, then they understand perfectly.”
This translation unlocks better conversations, reveals when products have changed, and makes pruning possible. Bas sees this as the heart of the job.
“It’s about communication. People speak a different language. You have to bring it to their language.”
Patents last twenty years, but the world moves faster. Technologies shift. Markets change. Teams evolve. Bas believes no decision is perfect because nobody knows the future.
What matters is documenting the reasoning behind each choice. This gives teams clarity when things change and confidence when revisiting decisions years later. He uses simple examples, such as countries that suddenly lose strategic value due to global events. What once made sense might not make sense now, and that is normal.
In Bas’s experience, this shift happens much faster today. You cannot rely on a twenty-year asset in a world where product variation happens every quarter. As he puts it, this is where AI already plays a role. He uses it daily to extract useful insights faster, summarise documents, and locate information that would normally take hours. It does not replace judgment, but it makes it possible to stay aligned while the landscape keeps evolving. Still, he is clear that humans remain essential.
“In the end, I think humans will be in the loop. Talk to people. You learn things you didn’t even know you wanted to know.”
For more insights subscribe to Talk IP to me on Spotify, Apple Podcast or Youtube. and follow us on LinkedIn for updates and new episodes.
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