BlueIron IP / About
A business advisory practice for IP as a management function.
Engage us two ways — transactionally for a specific instrument (IP-backed lending, portfolio acquisitions and sales, IP insurance, enforcement) or continuously as Fractional Chief IP Officer. For operating companies whose patents have grown into something the business needs to actually use.
IP is a management function, not a purchasing function. Built deliberately, patents produce outcomes the company can name — capital using the IP, licensing income, enforcement leverage, acquirer-favorable diligence. Built reactively, they become an expense line with a 20-year tail. Which one the company gets depends on whether IP is being run as a function of the business.
Engage us two ways.
Pick a transaction. Or pick continuous management. Either way, you walk out with outcomes the business can actually use.
Transactions.
An IP-backed loan. A portfolio valuation or analysis. An enforcement assessment of a suspected infringer. A portfolio acquisition or sale. IP insurance placement. We've done each one from every side of the deal — buyer, seller, lender, insurer, enforcer.
Fractional Chief IP Officer.
Every patent decision — what to file, what to abandon, what the portfolio is for — comes with a business-first framework.
The decisions stay yours. You get the confidence to make them, and we take the day-to-day load off your plate.
Your attorney handles the drafting. You get patents that point at business outcomes — capital using the IP, leverage when negotiating, options when a competitor moves.
Portfolio map, continuation strategy, filing thesis, outside-counsel coordination — all handled.
The transactional path works for a defined deal on a known timeline. The ongoing path is for companies building IP assets — and want them handled by someone who knows what to do with it.
The principal.
Outside patent counsel to Fortune 10 companies earlier in the career. That work was over a decade ago and informs everything since.
In-house IP counsel at an IP-heavy venture-backed startup with around a hundred patents under management — running the docket and continuation strategy from inside the company.
Since: years of IP-collateralized loans structured and underwritten as the lender. Working with patent portfolios from the lender’s side, where chain of title, filing-to-revenue mapping, and workout survivability decide whether a deal closes.
Founder of BlueIron. Engineer first, patent attorney second. Registered with the USPTO. Author of Investing in Patents. Host of the Patent Myths podcast.
- Education Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — BS & MS, Mechanical Engineering University of Denver, Sturm College of Law — JD
- Credentials Registered USPTO patent attorney CPVA · Certified Patent Valuation Analyst
- Recognition IAM Strategy 300 — top patent strategists worldwide
- Published Investing in Patents — the book Patent Myths — the podcast
One role. Three company stages.
How the role adapts as the company grows.
Build the portfolio that holds up in next-round diligence.
The moment the portfolio gets built is the moment the architecture sets. Early filings drafted under investor pressure, without strategy, are how companies arrive at a Series B with unenforceable claims and a budget question they can’t answer. The role sets drafting priorities, shapes the provisional architecture, and points each filing at a business position the company will still want a year later.
Curate, retire, and focus around what the business actually sells.
Revenue makes the business comprehensible. Patents filed before that clarity — usually a lot of them — get sorted: kept, narrowed, sold, abandoned. Done well, the work saves six figures a year in maintenance fees and sharpens the portfolio around the products that actually earn.
Run the IP as the financial asset it has become.
At scale the IP can be used as collateral, insured, licensed, or divested. In-house counsel is usually present and capable; what is missing is the function that runs the IP as a financial instrument — collateralization, IP insurance, cross-licensing, acquisition positioning, and reporting at the altitude the CFO needs.
Who we work with.
Plain-language qualifiers. If you’re on the right side of all five, the conversation is worth having.
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01 · Real revenue
$1M minimum for CIPO, $5M+ for lending. Lending engagements typically have $20M+ revenue. Pre-revenue startups qualify with at least $10M in outside funding, or occasionally on referral with a clear commercial path.
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02 · US domiciled
US corporate structure. Lending and CIPO engagements both depend on US legal infrastructure. International clients with US subsidiaries qualify.
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03 · Issued patents
For lending: at least one issued US patent. For CIPO: either an existing portfolio or active prosecution. Applications alone aren’t enough to collateralize.
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04 · Legible path to profit
A business we can understand in one conversation. Doesn’t have to be profitable today — has to be comprehensibly on its way there. We underwrite enterprises, not ideas.
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05 · VC funding — optional
Venture backing is welcome but not required. Bootstrapped and founder-owned operating companies are often the best clients here, because the economics of not diluting are clearer to the founder.
Thirty minutes, principal to principal.
Most engagements start with a call. No form, no intake queue — you’ll be talking to Russ directly, and you’ll know by the end whether there’s a second conversation worth having. If it isn’t a fit, we say so on the same call.
BlueIron IP is a business advisory practice. Nothing on this page constitutes legal advice.