Valuation by Absence: Modeling Evidentiary Gaps in Patent Value Assessment
Patent valuation frameworks typically rely on affirmative indicators such as standard declarations, clause-level mapping, citation activity, product implementation, and licensing history. Yet in litigation, licensing negotiations, and essentiality assessments, valuation outcomes are often shaped by what the record lacks. Missing standard mapping, absent teardown evidence, deployment opacity, or the absence of licensing comparables can materially narrow valuation confidence. This paper formalizes evidentiary absence as a first-class input to patent valuation. Using IN218255, IN240893, Wi-Fi/mmWave SEP examples, and judicial reasoning including Optis $v$ Apple, we develop an absence-aware framework across technical, deployment, and economic evidence layers. The framework introduces ordinal evidence states, absent, semantic proximity, structured evidence, and corroborated evidence, to guide valuation responses ranging from full valuation to constrained range, high uncertainty, or abstention. The approach improves transparency, reproducibility, and auditability in patent value assessment.