Competitive and Technical Intelligence ToolBox

Dolcera is a leading online competitive and technological intelligence service provider in the area of Intellectual Properties. They have launched Patent and Product Dashboards, a new interactive report that enables marketers to review customized competitive intelligence information from a single page in the Dolcera interface. The patent non-patent, marketing and product data that is updated according to client needs. These Dashboards reporting provides up-to-date snapshots of metrics that a decision maker consider most important to their online planning and reporting efforts. Dolcera has made it even easier for their clients to execute competitive insights from across multiple online project domains. Dashboards make it easier to access the vast amount of information through single interface. Dolcera is the first competitive intelligence firm to offer customizable Dashboard reports. Dolcera dashboards enable their clients to review, leave comments, and even perform other need based cus

Dolcera Infomaxx Pvt. Ltd, a KPO + RPO based organization at Hyderabad is emerging as a giant outsourcing firm in India. We have created various landmarks in the area of IP and patent research outsourcing, through integration on various in-house developed software tools and human intelligence in delivery quality services to our clients. This is evident from being getting recognition from various expert groups such as SCIP, PIUG, etc. Dolcera is an international services firm specializing in intellectual property, market research and competitive strategy for North American, European and Asian clients. Our clients include a number of the world's largest legal and technical firms. Our carefully developed processes ensure consistent and accurate results. Internally developed analysis tools give our team a significant edge. We have delivered complex analysis and research projects in areas including telecommunications, enterprise software, advertising, and medical devices, pharmaceutica

During the tenure of service, employees at higher income level would be required to pay heavy taxes on their bonus income. Superannuation Fund (SAF) enables the employers as well as employees to save income tax on such bonuses. The only restriction is that any excess over 27% of salary contributed by the employer to PF and SAF put together will not be allowed as deduction (Notification 10507 dated 16.1.98 w.r.e.f. 22.9.97). The trustees of the fund shall enter into a scheme of insurance with any insurer of life right from the start. Alternatively, they shall accumulate the contributions and interest thereon. With this amount, they shall purchase an annuity from the insurance company at the time of retirement (or prior death) of the employee, at or after a specified age, or on his becoming incapacitated prior to such retirement. At that juncture, the employee may be paid a commuted value not exceeding one-third of the corpus where the employee receives gratuity and half otherwise. This

If a company had not paid his employee any outstanding amounts such as bonus, LTA medical or last moths salary after resignation for the job, employee is free to file a civil suit against the company and claim those dues. As per the definition of "workman" within the definition of Industrial Disputes Act, one can file a petition under Section 33 (c) (ii) of the said Act and claim all the benefits.

Today Intellectual property is universally recognized as the engine that drives advances in all technology related disciplines. A better understanding of how to develop, utilize and leverage IP is essential for all industries and professionals involved in various fields of technology. A better insight of the patenting activity reveals a more objective approach to determining how to prioritize research and development projects based on newly developed patent mapping and valuation techniques using state of the art software. Research-based firms continuously seek to discover new ideas and new technologies and to translate these into unique products. Products that can be protected from competition by patents or other intellectual property rights. This requires a solid knowledge of the market and the trends in the market; who are your competitors and who are potentially your partners? This is where a patent map will help you. Mapping the patent landscape will give you an overview of and ins

Extracting information from huge datasets, based on keyword search is actually a challenging job. Patent databases contains millions of patent records and when it come to patent search to find out the relevant patent literature in a specified technology area, its really interesting but annoying too. The broader keyword based search results in more garbage, while narrower search may cause loss of some very critical and important patents. There comes the role of IPC and US class. We can get better results by combining the various relevant classification codes with the keywords. But it is also generate sometime 30% of unrelated patents. Thus patent searching is very important in an organization. It’s very crucial of technology companies as well as service providers. Since removing irrelevant patents during analysis, will cost time, thus affect the productivity and even the satisfaction of the clients. Some of the databases for providing the concept based search, but it is not so promising

Patents had been long identified as most valuable informational source of the technical and competitive informations. During the last few years these have gained a lot more attention. Due to increase in the globalization and competition, it is very important for the companies to protect their innovations and also make their R&D activities more efficient. India is well recognized as a knowledge hub, due to it’s highly talent pool. A lots of IP services providers; emerge in India during the last few years. Most of them have are being started by 2-3 people with their contacts in mostly in US. Now these firms are become the giant in providing specialized IP services. Lots of Indian law professional and law firms are also now trying to enter into the market to provide the highest quality analysis and research services. Most of these companies are located in the Bombay, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore cities, with well developed infrastructures and internet access. Almost all firms are cl

Current technological development necessitates conducting searches of patent information to avoid unnecessary investment as well as gaining the seeds for technological development and the applicable fields contained in the patent information. In order to accomplish this, visual representation of related patent information (hereinafter “Patent Map”) attracts the attention of the persons concerned. A patent map is produced by gathering related patent information of a target technology field, processing, and analyzing it. In simple terms, patent landscape mapping (PLM) is a tool to analyze existing IP to determine the risks and opportunities of participating in a given technology and/or product space. It describes the technologies and alternative solutions that have been applied to a particular product category. PLM identifies competitors based on their issued and filed IP, and outlines their strategies, strengths and problem-solving approaches. PLM enables a company’s scientific and comm

Patent Mapping a way to visualize patent mining results that involves clustering or otherwise orienting patent data on a page so that there is meaning in the spatial relationships among the data points. Patent Landscape: graphical representation of how large numbers of patents relate to each other based on keywords, citations, or patent classifications. It is useful in identify trends, determine patent gaps and opportunities, and design around competitors' patents. Patent maps are not only produced for a specific use, but also are produced to serve as so-called general-purpose use. Consequently, when using them, their contents can be read from various viewpoints. In particular, by combining multiple maps (figures and tables), it is possible to find a new matter that cannot be obtained from a single map. In addition, a total of more than 50 types of expressions, excluding minor ones, are used in this patent map series. Furthermore, total more than 200 maps were produced in terms of

One of the hot topics in the IP world today is IPC reform. Due to be published on 1 July 2005, and to come into effect on 1 January 2006, the eighth version of the IPC classification system (also referred to as IPC 2006) may not seem radically different from the previous IPC7, on first blush. But there are important benefits for patent searchers, attorneys, examiners and IP manager. What is the IPC system? The IPC classification system grew out of the Strasbourg Agreement of 1971 as an internationally acknowledged method of classifying patents for inventions, including published patent applications, utility models and utility certificates. Currently used in more than 100 countries as the major, or the only, form of classifying these documents, the purpose of the IPC system is to group patent documents according to the technical field in which they lie, independent of both language and terminology. As such, it is indispensable for retrieving patent documents to establish the novelty of

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO), a forte sector within the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) space, is attracting international law firms who are outsourcing legal work to India. Within the LPO industry, it is patent outsourcing, which is catching up faster than the rest of LPO jobs. While major firms in the US quote up to $15,000 for preparing and filing a patent application, companies based in India deliver the same work for $2,500-3,500 in India. This allows companies to file additional patents within the same budgets. India’s participation in the outsourcing market has been exceptional in the last decade. Both, overseas customers and Indian entrepreneurs constantly search for newer areas to render professional and commercial support at reasonable costs with quick turnaround. The Indian involvement in the patent-related market is still in a nascent stage. In my view, it will soon take off – especially since India has many lawyers and even more people in science and engineering str

Patent searching is both an art and a science. Consequently, search capability improves with practice. But optimum practice requires a solid foundation for those who seek to conduct searches accurately and efficiently. Identification of factors for determining when a search is needed and what types and sources of information should be searched in the process is the crucial part. For a patent searcher knowledge of various patent databases is extremely important. He should know the various pros and cons of these databases, along with database behavior in term of searching with the use of operators. For example, the USPTO patent search website allows to search full text and drawings of the entire patent issued since 1975. The full page images of patents since 1790 are also available. Also we can search patent application published since March 15th 2001. Similarly, other database such as EPO, JPO, Depatisnet, SIP, etc. is providing the free search facility. Paid databases such as MicroPat,

Patent mapping is a tool for representing complex patent landscapes, i.e., creating actionable intelligence. According to the Paual Germeraad, former VP of Research, Avery Dennison, “Frankly, it’s beyond me why any company in this day and age would even attempts to do R&D without the insights that patent mapping gives you. It’s like trying to navigate your company’s future blind without a map”. Maps are graphical representation of various information's gathered from a variety of sources. Map communication is the component of thematic mapping, the purpose of which is to represent one of the many possible results of the knowledge base. Maps are tools for the researcher and patent professional in finding and representing patterns and relationships among mapped data. Making association is an important part of our thinking. We make connection all the time. This ability is of great importance in the area of patents. Rational patent mapping is defined as interpretive distillation of l

Traditionally, patent information searches are done, as a part of the drafting a patent drafting, before patent filing or during patent litigation. During the recent few years, there have been lots of activity and interest had been evolved in the area of patents. Patents are now being considered as one of the major source of technological and competitive information. Computer and internet technologies made it very easy to access these big informational sources. In our highly competitive business environment Patent awareness is a critical skill for business managers, engineers, researchers, inventors, consultants, or anyone involved in Patent issues. Patents are an important source of technological intelligence that companies can use to gain strategic advantage. Presently, economists, social science researchers, policymakers, businessmen and professionals have begun to make increasing meso-level and macro-level use of patent information. This is being done to analyze, for example, paten

A patent is a right granted to an individual or group (such as a company) which permits the grantee the knack to avoid others from making, using, or selling the invention, for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or composition of matter (substance) (known as an invention) which is new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. Patents by their techno-legal nature are written in a specific format, thus enabling it difficult to read and understand by a lay man. The focus of this paper is to provide very basic information of a patent document, so that a lay man can easily understand a patent. There are three main types of patents: # Utility patents: are patents on inventions which function in a new way or to provide a new result # Design patents: is a patent on the aesthetic design or ornamentation of something that already exists. A design patent is granted when the design in question does not cha

Patents are most comprehensive and well documented technological and competitive information source. The most important is that it freely accessible through internet. Studies of technological change constitute a field of growing importance and sophistication. Just as it does in scientific papers, citation plays an important role in the patents field. The inventor uses it to indicate the stage of technology previously reached, upon which his invention improves. However, a patent examiner may find patents that could counter-indicate granting of a patent and 'oppose' the application. These citations are usually included in databases under ‘Referenced Patents ‘or ‘Referenced Literature’. Citation analysis is used to evaluate and weighs the possible opportunities and risks of engaging in particular technologies. Careful analysis and understanding helps decision makers to establish offensive licensing strategy to add on new revenue. It can provide information on who are involved in y