One-hundred % of patents make money for their lawyers, but very few--some estimates say 5% or fewer--make money for their owners. This disconnect is striking when you say it out loud, but few seem to recognize that it exists. Perhaps this is because it works very well for the "Patent Industrial Complex."
To this end, every intellectual property law firm has bills to pay, appearances to maintain, and risks to mitigate. This can certainly be tough to see when one is working to grow a successful legal practice, as I did in an earlier part of my career, but the thought did arise from time to time. A well-known IP lawyer I worked used