A 2022 EUIPO revealed that 93% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that registered their intellectual property rights (IPRs) saw positive impacts on their business.
Since only ~10% of SMEs in this study registered their IPRs, the remaining 90% potentially miss out on these positive effects. They need to understand how business and IP strategies work together to support their business outlook and get practical help to achieve, utilize, and maintain such rights.
Throughout my career working at Novo Nordisk, H. Lundbeck, and Zealand Pharma, I have noticed this knowledge gap when reviewing small businesses’ IP and patent portfolios for mergers, acquisitions, or collaborations.
These valuable innovations were often not well-protected for the long term, leading to fewer offers than they could have received if the IP strategy had been better planned.
My main goal in driving PATENTsmarter™ is to provide better options for you to gain the rewards that your innovations and creations deserve.
When I meet business owners who feel copied or are accused of copying, the stress is tangible, and the overwhelming situation is evident. Conflicts about rights and ownership are part of running a business, but they don’t have to ruin your or your business’s health.
The emotional and financial burden of such conflicts can be dramatically reduced by learning, preventing, and proactively preparing for how to approach and deal with such situations. When you know what to do – it all feels less dangerous.
Many small businesses have patents that don’t effectively protect their key innovations. Instead of focusing on strategic protection, they often apply rushed and unrealistic practices.
Examples of such practices have three things in common: they do not consider the business strategy and potential marketed products, disregard future needs for development and protection, and show a lack of IP-strategic insights in general.
Thus, they result in the following:
As a result, they may find themselves in a merger or acquisition situation where they do not receive fair compensation for their work.
Instead, they deal with reduced business value due to poor patent strategies. Investing becomes risky and limiting when the steps aren’t clear.
This study from 2022 also showed that about 27% of small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) reported infringement of their intellectual property rights (IPRs).
About 15% of these were infringements of registered IPRs (such as trademarks and/or patents), in contrast to the remaining non-registered IPRs (e.g., copyrights). The number of infringed registered rights varied slightly in the range of 14-16%, depending on the size of the businesses.
The smaller the company, the higher the risk of infringement of your registered IP rights.
Tangible consequences
The OECD and EUIPO confirmed a rather daunting statistic in a study published in 2023: “Risks of Illicit Trade in Counterfeits to Small and Medium‑Sized Firms”.
According to this study, SMEs (0-250 headcounts), including startups (0-50 headcounts) and micro enterprises (0-10 headcounts) that experienced intellectual property (IP) infringement (aka copying, plagiarism, piracy) have a 34% reduced chance of surviving the following 5 years, compared to those businesses who are not infringed.
In other words, counterfeiting dramatically increases the risk that an SME may exit the market, making continued operations unprofitable and potentially leading to business closure or even bankruptcy.
My name is Gyde Balzer Carstensen;. In 2020, I started PATENTsmarter™ to help startups and inventors understand patents, intellectual property rights (IPRs), contracts, and other business-critical strategies, including trade secrets.
Why? You need to understand your business and your options for protecting its assets, products, revenue, and profit!
I developed the idearlify® approach, which puts your business needs at the center of your protection (intellectual property) strategy, provides you with learning opportunities o different levels and gives you tools to put what you learned into pracise as fast and smoothly as possible.
The idearlify® approach and its principles form the foundation of everything I do in PATENTsmarter™. It represents my commitment to providing knowledge and insights about intellectual property rights (IPR) at various levels – and in human lingo. This includes business-relevant frameworks and tools that are adjustable to your needs and make it easier for you to apply what already works for thousands of businesses worldwide while avoiding repeating mistakes that ruined others…
My focus is on empowering you to understand how IPRs impact your business and what you can do to spot and handle risks early.
Depending on who you are and what you do, I find ways to help you figure out where to start and when to go “all in” – because you have something valuable to lose.
If you understand your needs – and how to convey them clearly to your patent or IP advisor, you both win a safe time and money (that can be spent on what matters in your business).
That’s why I put a lot of work into explaining how you can apply a purpose and business-focused IP strategy – no matter the size, budget, or product type of your business.
Knowledge and theoretical concepts are fantastic helpers to underline a theory and understand your options.
But it will be lost shortly after if you don’t apply what you learned.
That’s why I give you processes and how-tos, checklists, and “method templates” or guides to make knowledge applicable, and why my offers often are combined with online course elements like videos or recordings – so you can revisit them (not forever, but for some months or years).
Let’s keep you from making expensive or embarrassing mistakes.
It’s inefficient and can jeopardize your business’ future outlook.
Learn from others, you did things wrong – and those who did everything right – and do what’s best for your business!
How it started
I started PATENTsmarter™ in 2020 while working full time while still being committed to my career as an in-house patent specialist.
I work at Larsen & Birkeholm as a patent specialist and European patent attorney, mainly supporting biotech and life science startups. The main focus is preparing the patent portfolio for funding applications and/or due diligence processes concerning mergers or acquisitions.
I was temporarily helping the CEO at Metaceutic in 1 4 months position as head of Operations, Relations and IP working with process implementation, analysis, preparing legal arguments in connection with authorities and more.
I was responsible for planning and executing long- and short-term protection of potential products from early to late stage. However, my main focus was on late sage products and support to the litigation team, Long-term patent strategies, preparing for patent cliffs, and optimizing Patent Term Extension Strategies.
I also instruct external counsel, follow up, prepare the complete patent portfolio, and secure mitigation of potential third-party patent-related risks.
I was responsible for planning and executing long- and short-term protection of potential products from early to late stage, instructing external counsel, following up, preparing the complete patent portfolio, and securing mitigation of potential third-party patent-related risks.
I provided and prepared a project and product development-aligned checklist for risk and opportunity capture throughout the pipeline.
I also engaged with regulatory affairs to learn from each other and optimize Patent Term Extension knowledge and processes.
I spent almost 7 years at Novo Nordisk in different positions, from temp to principal patent attorney and project manager, focusing on patent litigation readiness projects.
Most of my positions included global strategic and executive responsibility for the patent strategy (exclusivity and freedom to operate), instructing internal patent team members and external local counsel, and preparing for oppositions and other patent conflicts with external local support, including Europe, Denmark, and the US.
My first years of training as a patent attorney were spent in a small patent law firm in Copenhagen.
After a short while, I was offered to represent Budde Schou at satellite offices (on my own) and thus spent 1-2 days per week in Sønderborg and Odense for a longer period, supporting the local innovation hubs with patent knowledge and gave my first patent lectures at the University (Alsion).
After years of working full-time at one other Novo Nordisk and studying for the European Qualifying Exams, I passed in 2014 and am now a member of Professional Representatives at the European Patent Office.
Currently (in 2025), there are 332 representatives on the list from Denmark and 10.000 across Europe. The certification can be taken by professionals trained under European Patent Attorneys by signing up for over 20 hours of examinations in 4 main categories of work-related tests.
The certifications prove a minimum skill set and training in the European patent framework; however, they can never stand alone. I believe that my experience from in-house positions, in combination with this Exam, helps me understand your strategic needs and options from your standpoint compared to other colleagues who have always worked as external advisors.
The Danish certificate is a broader patent exam than the European Patent Attorney certification above. The course and Exams are available for qualification after 3 years working with patents and other IPs and provide insights into Danish and European competition law, trademark, copyright, patent, utility models, and marketing acts.
I graduated with a Master of Science in Biomedicine in 2008. In 2006 or 2007, I managed to sign up for a patent course, which I expected to be boring but necessary. I was surprised and found my future career path by chance at the University of Southern Denmark.
In 2007, I moved to Copenhagen to do my Masters work at Novo Nordisk Laboratories and graduated in 2008, with two job offers at hand. And that's how it all began.
I took my first patent course at the university and got "hooked".
I've spent the last 18+ years voluntarily helping expats (and their spouses) and international students, as well as Danish students, find their first job in Denmark or change careers.
This work has honed my spotting opportunities and special skills, supporting people struggling to find a way forward after a long period of receiving rejections, and has made me a compassionate leader, mentor, and friend. I help 1-2 people per year in their job hunt.
For some years, I was a mentor through the career mentor program at IDA (Danish Engineers Society), helping newly graduated students (Danish and international) find their career paths and land their first jobs.
I was a career mentor at FORENINGEN NYDANSKER for some years, helping ex-pats and their spouses to write applications and CVs that speak to the Danish employees. I helped 1-2 expats per year in this period.
After helping many students and friends find and apply for jobs I started my official volunteer career mentor career in 2014.
I enjoyed helping many people get into shape, from beginners to triathletes. I taught for up to 15 hours in my peak period, but my usual quota was 2-4 hours per week.
After countless analyses of startup patent portfolios related to mergers, acquisitions, and research or service collaborations, I recognized an important truth:
Many startups and university spin-offs have incredible technology but often lack the vital business insight and strategic knowledge to protect their innovations.
When they patent too broadly, too early, or too late, they inadvertently diminish their investment potential.
If these inventors and inexperienced business founders had understood the patent strategies that would make them attractive to large companies in the future, they could have positioned themselves more effectively and secured more significant funding (reward) for their innovative work.
This realization sparked my dream to provide startups with clear and empowering patent strategy insights.
In 2017, I came up with the name PATENTsmarter™, and one day, I checked if the domain name was available. I was thrilled that patentsmarter.com wasn’t taken yet – unbelievable, right?!
Now, I owned my domain name, started planning, took courses, and realized I was camera shy.
Whoops…
I looked for training and started working towardrd my goal. If others could overcome their shyness, I could do so, too, and my vision of helping entrepreneurs and inventors was significant enough.
I registered my business this year with VAT numbers and everything else. I also started building my homepage and course platform, with translation options, self-hosting, and everything else I considered necessary to ensure that I control my (and your) data.
I learned a lot and created my first version of the brand and homepage.
I also started my Instagram profiles. While I practiced my communication skills, learning how to speak to my audience and not my peers/colleagues in IP, I realized an important thing:
Many entrepreneurs believe patents can protect names and texts and feel that they’ve been copied (although they may not feel this way without the law supporting this allegation). Therefore, I decided to focus on these IPRs briefly since my direct messages were filled with requests and questions.
I never thought that PATENTsmarter™ would turn into a career since the one I had was great, and I loved my patent specialist in-I never imagined that PATENTsmarter™ would evolve into a career, especially since I loved my in-house role as a patent specialist. I worked hard to earn my title as a European Patent Attorney in 2014 and achieved my Danish Certification in 2012.
However, it became increasingly challenging to address all the inquiries from small business owners and digital entrepreneurs. I wanted to produce products and establish my course platform, but balancing that with a demanding job that required 50 to 70 hours per week was difficult.
By the end of 2021, I made the decision to go “all in.” I had successfully produced, marketed, and sold my first online course in Danish, prepared a two-hour live course, and created an online beginners’ patent course for Biomedical Design students at Københavns Universitet in both Danish and English. I also guest-lectured at an MBA program at CBS in Denmark (in person) and ESADE in Spain (online), delivered guest blog posts, and provided bonus courses for other educators who support entrepreneurs.
There was simply too much to manage with two jobs. Larsen & Birkeholm noticed my activities and offered me a role working two days a week. I accepted, and since September 15, 2021, I have been supporting life science and biotech startups and SMEs. My work includes drafting patents, developing patent strategies, conducting Freedom to Operate analyses, and much more. This opportunity has given me wonderful colleagues and an office in the heart of Copenhagen.
I am incredibly grateful for this position, as it alleviates the financial pressure on PATENTsmarter™ while allowing me to focus on my vision. More importantly, it enables me to maintain my skills as a patent specialist and make a difference with advice, while I can keep my work at PATENTsmarter™ independent from any conflicting interests of delivering advice at a high hourly rate.
In March 2022, after extensive networking, participating in a podcast, lecturing again at Biomedical Design, and creating my first series of courses for Danish entrepreneurs with an online presence [insert title], I received a significant order from Gubra A/S.
They requested a beginner’s patent course for their entire R&D department and a two-day in-depth workshop for their project management and decision-maker team.
The workshops were a great success; however, shortly after, I contracted Covid-19.
This started a series of events that triggered an immune reaction that would give me a fever for the next 2,5 years while the doctors tried to fix me.
Everything was paused, while I struggled to get better.
In 2023 the doctors finally found some medical treatment that reduces the fever and helped me gain strength.
While I was still on my very long path of recovery, I scaled up my working hours.
I hired a mentor to help me streamline my product strategy, marketing, and sales efforts so that I could spend my limited time on my business wisely.
This led to the production of a never-before-seen (at least I had not found it anywhere before I created it) plug-and-play template and online course package for digital entrepreneurs, “STOP TYVEN”-pakken, and the kickoff of my Danish newsletter for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
I started marketing it and was invited to appear on another Podcast as a guest. I discussed “digital copying” and how to prevent and avoid it, including avoiding making false accusations.
In 2024, I formally added 1:1 sparring sessions to my offerings and practiced my online communication on Instagram. I focused on small businesses and provided them with business-critical protection strategies and tools. I continued to offer “STOP TYVEN”-pakken, smaller mini-courses, and free webinars.
I have helped several entrepreneurs and startups by offering customized sparring bundle deals that align with their needs (see some examples here).
Simultaneously, I started producing my newest idearlify® IDEA to PATENT course, which is precisely that: A step-by-step guide from idea to patent. It’s more than your regular patent course and is a huge endeavor.
A patent counsel colleague I trusted with my master plan and initial work products commented something like this after a long pause: “So you are sharing everything that a patent attorney knows and does but never tells their clients in one go (because it’s not the job at hand) and combine it with everything you know from an in-house business strategy perspective?! – That’s smart! But you will never be able to ask what this is worth!”
Oh, and I know that, but I can make a massive difference for startups and SMEs that need to implement solid IP strategies. I also discuss trade secrets and other IPs and offer different levels of insight, ensuring you’re not overwhelmed but can apply what you learned in practice.
My work was unfortunately interrupted (again!!!) by a move and renovation project that expanded from 4 months to almost 8 months and thus occupied my attention, followed by surgery in November and another recovery round.
Although this was tough, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t get back in the saddle. So, by the end of 2024, I was ready to look ahead to the new year,2025, without renovation, and according to the hospital, there was very little activity of the disease.
It’s time to serve startups and growing SMEs and to produce patent-focused offers. I will still support solo entrepreneurs and provide offers, but I will not focus my marketing efforts that much on this audience.
Why? Small businesses are often unaware of their needs, so I spent too much time on awareness creation compared to what I originally planned for my business.
Remember, I started PATENTsmarter™ with technology and startups with inventions in mind, and I want to deliver on that promise (to myself and them).
My offers are designed to show you how to use these tools in your business to unlock new opportunities and protect your creations from being copied.
I’m excited to help you better understand intellectual property rights, such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. After all, my business was founded on them.
Some of my services will help you find an IP strategy that fits your unique business type or model. Others provide a beginner-friendly introduction to the world of intellectual property, making it easy to decide if and when to explore which areas to apply to next.
Trust what PATENTsmarter™ customers and followers say…
Don’t know where to start – or which questions to ask (first)? Let me help you figure things out…
If you have not already taken advantage of I,- you can book a one-of” free 15-minute call with me to get you started. There are no strings attached.
You can also book an entire sparring session through the booking site if you have already spent your 15 free minutes with me.
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I’m based in Copenhagen, Denmark but work with clients around the globe.
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PATENTsmarter™ er ikke et patentadvokatfirma og yder ikke juridisk eller anden rådgivning.
PATENTsmarter™ er et informations- og uddannelseswebsted, der drives af European Patent Attorneys (og Dansk CErtificeret Patent Agenter), herunder specifikt ejeren, grundlæggeren og CEO for PATENTsmarter™, Gyde Balzer Carstensen.
Læs venligst vores Forretningsbetingelser, før du bruger de oplysninger , der tilbydes i shoppen eller på anden måde af PATENTsmarter™.
Alle Produkter og ydelser, blogs, mentoring, skræddersyede løsninger, events, webinarer, workshops og meget mere, herunder materiale eller indhold, der deles af PATENTsmarter™, er udelukkende til uddannelsesmæssige og illustrative formål, der har til formål at give en bedre forståelse af loven og dens potentielle muligheder og risici, og kan ikke opfattes som juridisk rådgivning.
Indholdet garanteres ikke at være korrekt eller opdateret med de seneste nationale eller internationale lovændringer. Nogle gange må begreber blive forenklet for at reducere kompleksiteten og sikre en bedre begrebsforståelse, hvilket betyder, at udvalgte emner eller aspekter kan være udeladt eller ikke fremhævet fra alle vinkler.
Det er dit (brugerens) ansvar som virksomhedsejer at sikre, at du kender de juridiske konsekvenser af dine handlinger og dermed også at konsultere en patentadvokat eller juridisk rådgiver, før du handler på baggrund af noget, du har lært eller konkluderet på baggrund af produkter, ydelser og indhold leveret af PATENTsmarter™.
Selvom PATENTsmarter™ kan hjælpe med at strømline dit arbejde og fremhæve tilgængelige muligheder og risici, der skal overvejes, kan det ikke erstatte rådgivning fra en patentkonsulent eller juridisk rådgiver.
Din specifikke situation, forretningsmodel, produktdetaljer, konkurrentsituation og adfærd er nogle af de aspekter, der påvirker din juridiske status, og som i nogle tilfælde kan synes at være i modstrid med det, du har lært på f.eks. specifikke PATENTsmarter™-kurser.
PATENTsmarter™ garanterer eller lover ikke specifikke resultater eller udfald for virksomheder eller enkeltpersoner, der deltager i eller bruger produkter eller ydelser, der leveres via denne webside eller tilknyttede ydelser.
Alle kan lære med PATENTsmarter™, men resultaterne vil variere og afhænge af sagsspecifikke detaljer, forståelse af det præsenterede indhold, den personlige indsats, der er forbundet med at oversætte det, og rådgivernes kompetence, som forklaret ovenfor.
Hvis du ønsker min praktiske støtte som din rådgiver, kan dette ikke ske gennem PATENTsmarter™. Du kan kontakte mig via min konsulentaftale med Larsen Birkeholm; men da dette er en helt uafhængig virksomhed, skal du ikke forvente rabatter eller andre fordele som følge af køb af PATENTsmarter™. Jeg tilbyder kun et begrænset antal rådgivningstimer hos Larsen & Birkeholm, så det kan være nødvendigt at kontakte mig i god tid, hvis du ønsker min sagsspecifikke service.
