Standards and IP Strategy
A new practice area focused on tracking research, standards, and patents so technology companies can implement or contribute to post-quantum cryptography without creating avoidable IP problems.
Most commercial activity around post-quantum cryptography is now about migration: inventory the cryptographic assets, prioritize by data longevity, and move to the NIST standards on a timeline. That work is necessary, and it is already served by specialist firms and systems integrators.
The thinner market is the technical–legal layer. NIST has published FIPS 203, 204, and 205. Royalty-free licenses cover certain patent portfolios that had been asserted against ML-KEM. Residual risk remains for hardware accelerators, side-channel countermeasures, hybrid constructions, and protocol integrations. Ongoing work continues in additional signatures and in IETF protocol profiles. Companies that implement the standards or contribute to the process still need clear advice on what they can patent, what they should disclose, and where freedom-to-operate is incomplete.
We built PQScope to connect the research record, the people and organizations behind it, the standards process, and the patent disclosures. That graph is the data engine for a new practice area: Standards and IP Strategy.
The practice covers three related questions.
What is actually being standardized, and who is shaping it? Research momentum, contributor networks, and patent linkages are visible in the record. PQScope surfaces them so that product roadmaps and diligence reviews can be grounded in the current state of the process rather than in last year’s announcements.
What residual patent risk exists for an implementation? The NIST licenses are important but limited. A freedom-to-operate assessment for a specific product feature maps the known commitments against the actual design choices and identifies what still requires attention.
How should a company position its own IP? NIST prefers royalty-free or clearly licensed contributions. Research organizations and product teams need advice on patent statements, defensive filings around implementations and crypto-agility mechanisms, and how to structure portfolios so that they support commercialization without impeding standards adoption.
This is not a cryptographic inventory or a migration program. It is the IP and standards-intelligence layer that those programs usually lack. Full detail on the engagement forms appears on the practice page.
We are glad to discuss a specific implementation, a contribution plan, or a diligence review at an early stage.