How are Pending Continuations and Divisional Applications Treated?
Pending patent applications are generally too speculative to justify any value as the patent or some of the claims may never be approved by the patent office. Buyers are usually not interested in acquiring individual pending applications until the claims are allowed and the patent is subsequently issued. An issued patent can spawn children in the form of continuation and divisional applications. As these applications are not yet allowed by the patent examiners, they are somewhat speculative, however they can add value to the patent. If an issued U.S. patent is sold together with pending continuation and divisional children applications, this can increase the value of the issued patent by 10-25%. Often a continuation involves broadening the claims of the parent, so buyers are highly reluctant to acquire parents without continuations and these are almost always bundled together in the sale. However, divisional applications are somewhat different from the parent, involving different inven
