Sterne Kessler has been ranked in the Top Ten for patent quality in the United States according to a survey published in the May-June 2011 issue of Intellectual Asset Management magazine.  SKGF was also ranked as a top ten law firm for patent quality in two industry categories – the industrial area and in information technology. This is the second consecutive year that SKGF has been featured in Intellectual Asset Management’s top 10 for patent quality in the U.S.

Ocean Tomo points out that quality can be defined and measured by the actions of patent holders in their decisions to maintain patents they consider to have value and abandon patents they believe have little or no value.

This survey used a detailed system for determining the value of a patent, based on a large number of factors that have been shown to correlate directly with a company's decision to invest in a patent by paying periodic maintenance fees to hold onto the patent rights in order to determine if the patent is worth maintaining or should instead be abandoned.

By examining the features of patents that were previously renewed versus those that were abandoned, this survey assesses the quality and likely value of current in-force patents. But not all patents have value. In reality, about 57% of all U.S. patents are abandoned before the end of their terms. This means that those patents which a company chooses to renew are likely to be the most valuable and of the highest quality.