Patents as products

Within a post by Alan Minsk at Forbes titled Old Model: Patents Protect Products. New Model: Patents Themselves Are Products , one has the text:

Strategically focused patent portfolio development is a key process in protecting intellectual property and one that may enable a smaller player to have relatively large leverage in an industry, because it can obtain an asset of value to a competitor. This means that it can negotiate on more favorable terms with a more powerful competitor, contribute something of value to a joint-development project, increase its role in a standards group, raise capital more easily, etc. Further, it is not just a question of the number of patents a company has, but of the quality and potential value to others of those patents.

Of course, if one is an actual "player" in a field, conveyance of one's patent rights to a larger competitor could erode one's ability to be a "player." One could revert to the status of an independent contractor R&D lab.