I have been reading various documents and blogs about current patenting trends and strategies. It appears that the pendulum has swung from a few years ago. When the patent frenzy began, a bottom up approach for harvesting inventions was advocated by many in which a carrot and/or a stick was presented to potential inventors in the company to compel them to author invention disclosures – for any inventions. The goal was increasing the size of the company's portfolio of patents, with the intent of having a metric (number of patents) that showed that the company was performing its due diligence and therefore protecting its intellectual property.

Now the trend seems to be a more directed towards a top-down approach – after many companies realize...