Congress and the courts have spent two decades treating patents as active weapons in an ongoing commercial fight. That framing misses what patents actually are to most of the people who own them: inheritable property. Twenty-year terms outlast careers. Portfolios pass to spouses, children, foundations, and trusts. Licensing income can support a family for a generation after the inventor stops working.... The pending fights over funder disclosure — Suggestion 26-CV-8 before the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, the USITC's proposed 19 C.F.R. § 210.14a, and S.3826, the Litigation Funding Transparency Act of 2026 — are not really arguments about transparency. They are arguments about whether a solo inventor's family keeps what the inventor spent 30 years building. The post The Patent Estate Problem: Why Litigation Finance Is the Only Preservation Tool American Inventors Actually Have appeared first on IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law .