You can save $842K in a year.
$2.31M over 5 years.

1,636 filed. 470 still alive.

1,166 patents are gone out of the 1,636 ever filed. 811 simply reached the end of their 20 year life, which is normal. The other 309 were dropped early without paying renewal fees.

Every patent, by status

Patents filed and granted, 2017 to 2025

A patent stays alive only while a yearly fee is paid, which is what a renewal date is.

4 things are working well.

You are good at getting patents. Grants come faster than the European field, the field builds on EFI inventions, and almost nobody has challenged what you hold. Everything after this is about keeping what the engine builds.

6 places value is waiting.

The largest sits under your own machines. Nozomi, Reggiani and Cretaprint sell into fields where EFI holds 14, 42 and 100 patents. You already own the engineering, and only the filings are missing.

A focused specialist
among imaging giants.

FujiFilm holds 351,038 patents and Epson 265,964, but those books span cameras, sensors and consumer electronics. Inside the 10 classes that define digital printing, you out-file Durst and Bobst in all 10 and grant faster than the European 3. The exposure is Japan and China, the 2 fortress markets.

How big each book is

Rival totals cover each company’s whole business, so this table sizes the neighbourhood. The class table below compares like with like.

The 10 classes that define digital printing

Office by office, inside the 10 printing classes

Epson and FujiFilm overlap the inkjet and workflow ground, so if any names deserve a standing watch, it is those 2.

Months to a US grant

406 office actions.
94 requests for continued examination.

A request for continued examination, an RCE, is a paid restart. The office closes a case, and the file is bought back open so the same examiner can look at the same invention once more. We read the examination record of all 254 US applications the file wrapper covers. They carry 406 office actions, 94 RCEs and 181 paid extensions. That is $1.67M of prosecution work, and $507K of it went into applications that produced nothing you still hold today.

What the prosecution cost

16 applications died because of no response.

These 3 files carry $146,800 between them. 1 produced no patent, and 1 more granted and then expired for unpaid renewal fees.

The field is 135,000 patents.
You hold 1,500 of them.

You hold the most patents in the area where most of them have already died, and the fewest where the market is biggest. Industrial printing holds 38,162 records against your 156, and it is where the presses ship. That is the open ground, and the calls below say which parts to take.

Where the book is alive, by technology area

A record can sit in more than 1 sub domain, so the 15 fields below count to 1,663. The 5 areas cover 1,500 of the 1,636 filed.

What to do in each of the 15 technology fields

File first means near zero holdings in a field EFI sells into. Keep filing means the strongest relative position, worth sustaining. Expand means a solid base worth extending outward. Grow selectively means niche value, worth filing where EFI is differentiated. Hold and defend means a dense field where the existing families are what matter. New filings run US, EP and CN first with a PCT on each, and key families extend to China, Japan and Korea where the products sell.

Where the field files, and where you do

A mirror image. The field files Japan and China first, EFI files the US and Europe first. Blank cells are counts the export does not carry on the same basis.

The 2 places to file first

Your most cited invention is dead.
So is the family behind it.

The 2 inventions other companies copy most are both ones EFI stopped paying for. Anyone can use them today at no cost. Some can still be refiled, and that window closes.

These are areas where the product
runs ahead of your patents.

EFI IQ, predictive service, closed-loop inspection and the digital thread are all shipping. We read the independent claims of granted patents to check, and none of them reach these features. The engineering exists. Only the filings are missing.

109 patents are costing you $368K a year.

We scored every granted patent, 1 by 1, on citations, term left and field density. 15 of them earn nothing and can go now, worth $56K a year, and 94 more need 1 review meeting to settle. The habit of keeping that list is what the book has been missing.

The 15 sit in 5 EP, 4 US, 2 BR, and 1 each in JP, CN, ES and IN, at an average age of 13 years. Clearing the 94 review cases too would return about $312K more a year. The 15 prunes alone release enough to pay for 3 new filings a year at the flat rate. The score runs 5 checks out of 10: citation volume, citation recency, backward citation age, term remaining and field density. Patents under 10 years old keep automatically, 154 of the 361, and litigated or transferred ones stay regardless.

109 applications in examination. $730,300 back.

Separate from the granted book, 109 applications are still being examined right now. Finished where they sit, at $12,000 to $15,000 an application, they cost between $1.31M and $1.64M. Transferred to us they cost $741,200, at 1 fixed fee per application that runs until the case ends. The fee does not move when the examiner asks again, which is the part of the bill this portfolio has never been able to predict.

30 new patents. $474,000 back.

Bought the way they are bought today, 30 new US patents cost $900,000. At 1 fixed fee per patent they cost $426,000, agreed before the work starts. Every office action, every examiner interview and the US lawyer fee sit inside it, so the bill does not move when the examination runs long.

$30,000 is the market rate for a US patent taken from filing through to grant. The flat fee is the rate quoted at the end of this report, and it does not change with the number of office actions.

6 places the EFI name
works for someone else.

452 of EFI’s 591 trademarks no longer protect anything, a worse ratio than the patent side. 13 names still on sale lost their US registrations, and 2 flagship lines were never filed at all. Filings recover all of it, and the register needs the owner the renewal dates need.

Every mark, by status

The names that got away

Recommendation: 13 filings that close the gaps

Today the register lives mainly in Classes 9 and 42, while the machine, service and publishing classes (7, 16, 35, 37, 38, 41) sit unfiled in most places. The class columns above close that. The order of work runs the same way the priorities do. The 13 lapsed names revive or refile before any enforcement leans on them, these filings follow, led by the house mark, the India response closes next, and watches, oppositions and notices go to the third party holders.

1 fixed fee per patent.
Money back if it’s rejected.

What the patents cost

What the trademarks cost

All out-of-pocket expenses, including foreign lawyer fees and government fees, are billed separately at actuals.