Capital using your assets.
When the portfolio is in shape, we structure a loan. Written from BlueIron’s own fund or, for larger deals, syndicated with partner lenders.
What makes a portfolio lendable.
Two conditions. Both have to be true. Most of the work of building a lendable portfolio happens long before lending is on the table.
Filings map to revenue.
Each family covers something the company actually sells, or is going to sell. Claims that read directly on a revenue stream — your product or a competitor’s product. A reader can connect a patent to a revenue line on the income statement without a translation step.
Litigation-grade patents.
Well-defined claims. Clean prosecution history. Single-actor infringement. The point isn’t going to court — it’s that competitors, acquirers, and licensees respect the position when they examine the file. You may never sue. What matters is that you could.
Who this is for.
A short fit test. If your company is on the right side of these, the conversation is worth having.
- Revenue at least $5M — most engagements are $20M+.
- Patents that directly relate to the revenue you are generating today, as well as new products down the line.
- Patents that read on competitor products — enforcement value adds to the asset.
- A financing event, distribution deal, or M&A conversation is on the horizon — or you simply want the capital option available.
- Pre-revenue. Lending is sized to revenue and what the patents protect of it — not to a vision deck.
- Patents drafted in a different era and untied to current products. They may be valuable in other ways; they don’t collateralize.
- Seeking venture-style risk capital. Lending focuses on revenue-generating products. We want to finance execution risk, not new-product risk.
Patent-fluent underwriting.
Since 2014, BlueIron has structured and underwritten loans against patent portfolios. Patents are the asset class we know.
Patents are a hard asset class for most asset-backed lenders. Valuation is opaque. Enforcement is uncertain. Disposal in a workout is harder still. The result: most patent portfolios sit on the side of the balance sheet as an expense line, not as collateral the company can put to work.
We built this practice to underwrite patents specifically. When a portfolio comes for a loan, we know what to look for. Chain of title, filing-to-revenue mapping, claim quality — these are the working vocabulary, not edge concerns. The diligence moves at the speed of the deal, not the speed of someone learning the asset class.
This isn't loan-to-own. BlueIron writes loans to solid, operating companies whose growth pays the loan back. Our incentive is for the asset — and the company — to grow. Loans are structured for long-term relationships, not workout opportunities.
Capital comes from two sources. BlueIron has its own fund for loans sized to the practice; larger deals are syndicated with partner lenders who trust how we evaluate portfolios. The borrower sees one practice on both sides — regardless of who ultimately writes the check.
Lenders who actually know patents.
Patents aren't a side capability for us. They're the asset class we write against.
Diligence at the speed of the deal.
We know what to look for. No quarter-long handoff while someone learns the asset class.
Single point of contact.
One practice on both sides — diligence and structuring.
Long-term relationships.
As your company grows, so does the financing — capacity to $100M and beyond as the asset supports the next step.
How a conversation starts.
Three steps. Most engagements never make it past step one — and that’s working as intended.
A thirty-minute call.
We learn enough about the business and the portfolio to tell you whether the conditions are met — or to name precisely what would need to be true first. If lending is not the right move, we say so on the same call.
An assessment of whether the conditions are met. No commitment.
Analysis of your IP and the business.
Family-by-family review of the patents against the two requirements: filings mapped to revenue and litigation-grade patents. Conversation about the business — what the company actually sells, where the revenue is concentrated, what growth looks like. We need to evaluate both sides of the asset, not just the paper.
A clear understanding of what we could underwrite today — and the path to a larger loan if you're not quite there yet.
Structure the loan.
When the conditions are met and the business wants the capital, we structure the loan. Sized to the asset, the revenue protected, and the use of proceeds the company has named.
A loan. Coordinated, underwritten, closed.
The terms — loan size, advance rate, tenor, covenants — are deal-specific and shaped at structuring against the underlying portfolio. We do not publish indicative ranges, because indicative ranges are the kind of number that gets quoted back to companies that don’t fit and shouldn’t apply.
Who runs it.
Capital that wants the company to grow.
Outside patent counsel to Fortune 10 companies earlier in the career.
In-house IP counsel at an IP-heavy venture-backed startup with around a hundred patents under management — running the docket and continuation strategy from inside the company.
Since: years of IP-collateralized loans structured and underwritten as the lender. Working with patent portfolios from the lender’s side — chain of title, filing-to-revenue mapping, workout survivability — as the unit of analysis, not edge concerns.
Engineer first, patent attorney second. Registered with the USPTO. Author of Investing in Patents. Host of the Patent Myths podcast.
Thirty minutes. Are your IP assets ready to use as collateral?
We learn the business, look at the patents, and tell you straight what we could lend against today — and where the next step is, either way.