People tend to overcomplicate patent strategy. But it’s really simple: nobody pushes around the person with the biggest gun.

You see the same pattern in geopolitics. Take China’s recent rare earth export restrictions. During Trump’s first term, China couldn’t use that threat. At the time, it imported about 95% of its helium from the US. Turns out helium is needed for quantum computing, rockets, MRIs, and chip manufacturing. If China had restricted rare earths, the US could’ve instantly retaliated by cutting off helium exports. (Source)

So China spent years fixing that vulnerability. It built domestic extraction capacity until its helium dependence dropped to 5%. Only then did it start playing the rare earth card. They eliminated the biggest places where someone can hurt them, before they started flexing power.

Patent lawyers should think the same way. In-house patent counsel, especially, get to be proactive in ways most other attorneys never are. Their job isn’t usually just to respond — it’s to systematically remove every spot where someone could take advantage of the company in the first place.

The defensive playbook is simple:

* Know who's out there

* Know what you're working with

* Check if your patents read on them

* If not, file or buy patents that do

* Make sure you have enough

That's it.

Simple doesn’t mean easy. It takes discipline, constant intelligence gathering, and thoughtful filing. But the framework itself is simple — and best of all, it’s automatable.

Most companies treat patents like insurance: something you hope to never use. Smart companies treat them like China treated helium: a dependency to eliminate. They identify who could hurt them, then systematically build the leverage to make aggression too expensive.

You don't even need to threaten anyone. You just need them to know you could.