Protecting the Full Innovation Lifecycle: Why Anaqua Acquired Unified Patents

By Justin Crotty, CEO, Anaqua

 

Earlier this month, we announced the acquisition of Unified Patents. In this post, I’ll explain why we chose Unified Patents, why now, and what it means for our clients.

 

The IP Industry Is Evolving

 

I have worked in and served the Intellectual Property industry for over 13 years. Until recently, I saw IP operating budgets existing in organizational shadows, buffered from reductions in down cycles. This precept made sense for many of the reasons that drew me to the IP industry in the first place, including the importance of IP as a driver of growth, profitability and competitive differentiation, the complexity to obtain and manage IP rights, and the challenge to understand and value IP assets. In an era of AI-fueled cost-savings goals (and AI-induced revisiting of everything) change is coming rapidly; IP operating costs are no longer immune.

 

According to a Gartner survey, 79% of CFOs set operating expense savings targets for 2026, including 42% who are targeting cuts of 3% or greater. From the same survey, 40% of CFOs are targeting Legal and Compliance areas to hunt for savings. Conversations I’ve had with clients, prospects, and IP industry participants bear this out. IP operations are now full participants in these cost management activities—and it’s often being driven from the top down.

 

IP operations are also getting squeezed from below with higher IP operating costs. For example, the USPTO’s most recent fee adjustment raised patent fees by roughly 7.5% across the board. The cumulative cost of maintaining a single U.S. utility patent through its full term now exceeds $14,000. Not coincidentally, according to our AcclaimIP patent analytics data, USPTO maintenance renewal volume decreased in 2025 for the first time in six years (and in more than 10 years, if you normalize for single-year spikes).

 

Compounding the squeeze on IP operations, IP litigation volume and costs continue to rise. According to Unified Patents’ 2025 Patent Dispute Report, non-practicing entity (NPE) district court filings increased 21.6% in 2025 versus 2024, while overall U.S. patent district court filings rose 12% year over year. Yearly, NPE lawsuits account for 90% of all litigation in the High Tech sector. As anyone who has been involved with litigation knows, responding to actual or threatened litigation isn’t discretionary, and traditional response vehicles are expensive, with U.S. district court proceedings running into the mid-seven figures, international campaigns running higher, and even USPTO administrative proceedings climbing into the mid six figures. Making things even worse, most NPEs lose when their patent validity is challenged but because of the high cost almost all end in settlements. With reduced overall IP budgets and mandatory litigation and licensing costs consuming a larger piece of the remaining pie, IP operations are doubly squeezed.

 

Extending What We Offer for Existing Anaqua Clients

 

Anaqua has always focused on helping clients and law firms obtain and manage IP assets quickly and efficiently, and that hasn’t changed. We have, and will continue to, develop and enhance tools and services that help clients lower the cost of managing IP operationally (e.g., AI-powered docketing), drive more value from their R&D programs (e.g., AI-assisted invention submission) and make better decisions about where to allocate scarce resources (e.g., annuity decision analytics).

 

With Unified Patents, we’re adding efficient solutions to manage growing patent assertions and licensing demands. Unified’s pooled, zone-based membership model gives clients two complementary lines of defense: technology-specific zones that proactively challenge and deter NPE assertions before they escalate, and standard-essential-patent (SEP) solutions that help navigate FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) licensing. Both exist to support the same objective of staying free to operate and deter low quality or unsubstantiated assertions, a further drain on R&D.

 

Beyond the membership model itself and the market datasets Unified has spent more than a decade building, this acquisition also brings Anaqua something less tangible but just as valuable: a team of deeply experienced IP practitioners and thought leaders. Their expertise will help inform the next generation of Anaqua’s IP products and services. To be clear, that means their insight shaping our roadmap, not any change to how Unified makes its own litigation and licensing decisions, which will remain independent, as described below.

 

For Anaqua clients, the practical benefit is a broader set of tools to reduce IP cost, improve portfolio decisions, and address risk and uncertainty against the vast majority of patent assertions before it becomes a full litigation expense. Every cost a client doesn’t incur fighting an unnecessary assertion based on low-quality assets can be used to meet the client’s objectives, including reinvesting in building the business that the assertion was aimed at, funding litigation and licensing involving high-quality assets, or realizing cost savings to meet profitability objectives.

 

Incremental Benefits for Unified Patents Members

 

For Unified Patents members, pricing, zones, contracts, and relationships remain unchanged, while members benefit from Anaqua’s global scale, technology investment, broader datasets, and AI-powered intelligence capabilities. Over time, the combination will provide deeper analytics, earlier warning signals, enhanced risk-management tools, and a more comprehensive platform to help organizations protect innovation, maintain freedom to operate, and manage IP risk proactively.

 

Shared Beliefs

 

Anaqua and Unified also share a belief that the global patent system functions most effectively when resources are focused on high-quality patent assets. Anaqua was founded to help practitioners build and maintain high-quality IP portfolios through our prosecution workflows, portfolio tools and integrated services. Unified approaches quality from the other direction by challenging low-quality patents used for abusive assertions. The result is a system that rewards high-quality IP and creates less friction for the clients building it.

 

Anaqua’s culture is based on three core values, which are being collaborative, client-centric, and expert. The Unified team exemplifies all three. Unified’s model is built on members pooling resources toward a shared defense, rather than each facing the same challenge alone, one after the next. Every zone and challenge decision made by Unified is to protect their members’ freedom to operate. And Unified’s attorneys have spent more than a decade building some of the deepest patent-litigation, prior-art, and licensing expertise in the industry.

 

To be clear, although we have shared beliefs, Unified’s decision-making remains independent. Challenges are filed in Unified’s name and decided at Unified’s discretion. Unified’s practitioners remain bound by the same professional responsibility and confidentiality obligations they always have been. Becoming part of Anaqua doesn’t change who Unified is, how it decides, nor which matters it pursues.

 

What’s Next

 

Anaqua’s mission is to empower our clients to develop and secure the world’s most influential and innovative ideas. This has not changed. Protecting an idea has always meant helping clients build strong, defensible IP; today it also means helping them keep the freedom to use what they’ve built. Unified Patents extends our ability to deliver on that mission end to end, helping organizations innovate, protect the value of their investments, and maintain the freedom to operate in an increasingly complex and cost-constrained world.

 

While cost scrutiny is increasing, I remain bullish on the IP industry and the value of IP writ large. In my experience as an executive and previously as an industry consultant there are only two ways to achieve sustainable competitive differentiation: innovation and branding. The entire IP industry exists to protect both. As AI permeates R&D and innovation, there is a bull case for growth in inventions and marks, and we are providing tools to power both. Looking ahead, we want to give clients a better experience, insight and control, by removing silos among historical prosecution, litigation and licensing views. This allows clients to make more informed decisions about where to invest and where to defend, not just keep a record of what they own.

 

If you’d like to learn more, we’ll be covering this in depth at The Anaqua Experience Conference this year September 29 to October 1 in Orlando, Florida (https://theanaquaexperienceconference.vfairs.com/).