Know your competitors

Typ­i­cal­ly viewed as only a legal func­tion, patent analy­sis and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) land­scap­ing can be use­ful as an advi­so­ry tool on a broad range of busi­ness func­tions, such as risk analy­sis, merg­ers and acqui­si­tions, prod­uct plan­ning and com­pet­i­tive strat­e­gy. As a result, inves­ti­gat­ing the patent land­scape should be of inter­est to both chief finan­cial offi­cers and chief exec­u­tives.

“Patent intel­li­gence helps busi­ness lead­ers make bet­ter and more informed deci­sions,” says John F. Mar­tin, chair­man and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of patent analy­sis soft­ware firm Innog­ra­phy. “When mov­ing into a new tech­nol­o­gy or prod­uct area, it answers ques­tions such as who is active in this tech­nol­o­gy and whether they are liti­gious, who are poten­tial part­ner­ing firms and whether it makes sense to devel­op or license these tech­nolo­gies.”

Exam­in­ing patent data can also help mon­i­tor com­peti­tor activ­i­ty, includ­ing who is buy­ing and sell­ing patents, and enforc­ing them through lit­i­ga­tion. “For exam­ple, using patent analy­sis for com­pet­i­tive intel­li­gence, a pre­mi­um elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­tur­er was sur­prised to dis­cov­er a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown com­peti­tor that was in stealth mode and was work­ing to launch sev­er­al com­pet­i­tive prod­ucts,” says Mr Mar­tin. “Armed with infor­ma­tion about the competitor’s prod­uct plans, the busi­ness was able to assess the poten­tial risk to its own busi­ness and proac­tive­ly devel­op a com­pet­i­tive strat­e­gy.”

Assess­ing poten­tial acqui­si­tion tar­gets – and ensur­ing a com­pa­ny doesn’t over­pay – is anoth­er area where patent analy­sis can help. Mr Mar­tin gives the exam­ple of a semi­con­duc­tor man­u­fac­tur­er that had agreed on a price to pur­chase anoth­er busi­ness, but realised the patent port­fo­lio was not as strong as it had first thought. “They were able to nego­ti­ate a reduc­tion on the pur­chase price by over £20 mil­lion,” he says. Such inves­ti­ga­tion can assess the risks of future patent claims fol­low­ing an acqui­si­tion, he adds.

 Patent intel­li­gence helps busi­ness lead­ers make bet­ter and more informed deci­sions

In-depth analy­sis of patent data can also help organ­i­sa­tions assess the val­ue of their own port­fo­lios and make deci­sions about which patents can be licensed to oth­ers and any poten­tial sales oppor­tu­ni­ties. “Intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty is a mul­ti­play­er game,” says Mr Mar­tin. “Com­pa­nies need to know where they stand rel­a­tive to their com­peti­tors and poten­tial mar­ket entrants to ful­ly under­stand the val­ue of their port­fo­lio and deter­mine the best going-for­ward strat­e­gy.”

Stay­ing on top of the mil­lions of patents filed each year would require huge resources for an in-house team. Even where such capa­bil­i­ties exist, these tend to be based around tra­di­tion­al key­word search­es, which can miss entries that use unusu­al terms or are from oth­er indus­tries. In addi­tion, as many as 20 per cent of patents can be missed as a result of patent data errors. For instance, Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Machines is spelt some 900 dif­fer­ent ways in patent data, Mr Mar­tin points out.

Organ­i­sa­tions, such as Innog­ra­phy, use big data tech­niques to com­pile the lat­est infor­ma­tion on patents, cleanse the data to cor­rect errors and pro­vide advanced search tech­niques going well beyond typ­i­cal key­word search. The result is that mul­ti­ple func­tions with­in organ­i­sa­tions can learn valu­able infor­ma­tion about com­peti­tor activ­i­ty and make informed deci­sions about their own strat­e­gy.

“Being informed about your company’s own port­fo­lio is just the first step,” says Mr Mar­tin. “The real­ly inter­est­ing answers arise from how your organ­i­sa­tion com­pares with the oth­er play­ers in the mar­ket­place.”

Innog­ra­phy, Inc.

Cor­po­rate Office

3900 N. Cap­i­tal of Texas Hwy

Suite 175

Austin, TX 78746

Unit­ed States

Tele­phone: +1 512 806 8688

Toll free: 877 603 2070

Fax: 866 827 4105

E‑mail: info@innography.com