How to manage patents that support your business (Bas Albers) | Talk IP to me Ep.2

IP management expert, Bas Albers breaks down how to manage patents that support your business without draining your budget.

Bas Albers has more than 20 years of experience helping companies - from SMEs to global enterprises - turn their patent portfolios into real business assets. Bas has built IP systems for more than 15 companies, aligned portfolios to product roadmaps, reduced unnecessary patent renewal spending, and helped leadership teams understand where patents create value (and where they don’t).

In this episode, Bas sits down with David Breitenbach, CCO of PatentRenewal.com, to talk about building a patent strategy that stays aligned with products, business goals, and reality, even when things change fast.

He explains:

◼️ Why the biggest internal IP risk is misalignment between patents and products

◼️ The single most common mistake companies make before he arrives

◼️ Why patent value is hard to measure, and what to focus on instead

◼️ How to avoid paying renewals for patents that no longer matter

◼️ Why IP managers should find the common language

◼️ How Patent Cockpit helps SMEs stay in control

00:00 Intro

01:20 Who is Bas Albers?

02:33 First company assessments

04:44 The biggest mistake companies make with patents

05:56 His work on a strategic level

06:58 Convincing management of patents

09:09 When a great patent is useless

10:56 Choosing which ideas are worth protecting

12:21 Getting to know the product isn’t easy

14:40 SMEs vs enterprises - how processes differ

16:45 Patent pruning and rapid product cycles

18:10 Translating patent language into product language

19:52 Patent Cockpit explained

21:42 How IP systems support better renewal decisions

23:24 Why decisions shouldn’t be judged in hindsight

26:29 AI and the future of IP management

29:45 Rapid-fire IP questions

Follow Bas:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/basalbers/

Join the PatentRenewal.com’s circle on LinkedIn:

https://bit.ly/patentrenewalcom

Follow David:

https://bit.ly/david-breitenbach

Get in touch

Our website: https://patentrenewal.com/

About us

At PatentRenewal.com, we believe IP renewals should be simple, transparent, and stress-free. We care about innovation and about making IP easier to understand and easier to use.

That’s why we created Talk IP to me, the podcast that brings fresh conversations to the world of intellectual property.

In each episode, innovators, IP experts, founders, and legal minds share real stories, hard-won lessons, and practical insights you can actually apply in your work.

Our goal is simple: make IP feel human, practical, and accessible.