What happens to patents and intellectual property held by Texans?

Your intellectual property stays yours, and your U.S. patents stay valid in the United States. Patents do not evaporate when a border moves. They are property, they are territorial, and the world runs a well-established system for protecting inventions across many countries at once. An independent Texas would join it, and Texas inventors would gain a Texas patent of their own on top of the protection they already hold.

A U.S. patent is property, and it stays valid where it was granted

A patent is a property right, and a granted U.S. patent remains a granted U.S. patent regardless of what happens to Texas's status. If you are a Texan holding a U.S. patent, you still hold it the morning after a vote, and it is still enforceable in the United States under U.S. law. The same is true of your trademarks and copyrights. A change in Texas's sovereignty does not reach into the U.S. patent office and cancel what it has already issued. Your inventions, your brands, and your creative work remain your property throughout.

Patents are territorial, which is why the world built a system to handle this

Here is the key fact most people do not know: patents have always been country-by-country. There is no such thing as a single worldwide patent. Each country grants and enforces its own, which means inventors have always had to protect their work across multiple jurisdictions, and the world built treaties to make that manageable. The Paris Convention, in force since 1883 and administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization, has 181 member countries; it lets an inventor who files first in one member country claim that early filing date in the others. The Patent Cooperation Treaty lets an inventor file a single international application recognized by over 150 countries. Texas inventors already live in this multi-country system. Independence simply adds Texas to the map of countries they file in.

New nations keep their place in these treaties, routinely

When a new nation comes into being, it does not fall out of the intellectual-property system. The settled practice is continuity. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Russia was recognized at WIPO as its successor. As colonies became independent, nearly all of them formally continued their obligations under the Paris and Berne Conventions without interruption. An independent Texas would join WIPO and accede to the Paris Convention and the Patent Cooperation Treaty, the same well-trodden path every new nation takes, so Texas inventors stay protected internationally without a gap.

Texas would issue its own patents, and the office is partly here already

An independent Texas would establish its own patent and trademark office to grant Texas patents, the same as every other nation. This is not foreign ground for the state: the U.S. patent office already runs a regional office in Dallas serving Texas and its neighbors, so the expertise and the examiner talent are already in the state. Texas inventors would end up with more protection, not less: their existing U.S. patents, their international filings under the treaties, and a new Texas patent at home. The exact rules of a Texas patent office are for the future Texas government to set; the capability and the model are already proven.

The bottom line

Patents and intellectual property held by Texans stay theirs. U.S. patents remain valid in the United States, the international treaty system that already protects inventions across borders simply adds Texas, new nations keep their treaty standing as a matter of routine, and Texas would issue its own patents through an office whose expertise is already in the state.