Patents Analytics and Intelligence – A Helping Hand for Strategic Decision Making
Patents has strong impact on the performance of an economy and on the success of an organization. Despite, it is generally viewed as a legal instrument that protects a technology. It's true, but it is also a powerful competitive tool and a valuable business asset. Patent data could prive valuable intelligence for technical
Patent and technol¬ogy intelligence is very crucial in today competitive environment directing the innovation process. Tracking of patent can help in providing directions for the innovation portfolio, perfecting the design of the product under development and avoid in re-inventing. Detailed analysis of patents could be used to assess the competitive position and expected competitive moves. The patenting history of a competitor reveals the technology road map they are following and possible insight for their future moves. A comparative analysis of competitor’s patent portfolio could reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the competition's technological position.
Patent intelligence could provide answers to many important and valuable strategic questions. Following are the few questions which could be answered better from patent data analysis:
A detailed analysis of patent portfolio could aids in revealing past patenting activities of the competition to decide areas where the organization can only design around existing patents (i.e., introduce incremental changes) and areas where they would have less competition. Patent citation trees can help management to find the parties who are applying for patents on improvements related to their own products, and thus incorporate in the portfolio projects for doing the same in relation to the competition's products. This will enhance the organization's bargaining power in negotiating cross-licenses if seeking a license is strategically required. In addition, patent visualization tools, which present a bird's-eye view of the patenting activity in a certain technological area, should be used in determining the areas where the organization will aim to develop next-generation and breakthrough products. Patent citations allow one to study spillovers, and to create indicators of the ‘‘importance’’ or technological impact of individual patents, thus introducing a way of capturing the enormous heterogeneity in the value of patents
Apart form these, patent intelligence could be used to answers various other types of questions of top management, R&D mangers, researchers, product managers, marketing mangers and many other divisions of a company.
Patent and technol¬ogy intelligence is very crucial in today competitive environment directing the innovation process. Tracking of patent can help in providing directions for the innovation portfolio, perfecting the design of the product under development and avoid in re-inventing. Detailed analysis of patents could be used to assess the competitive position and expected competitive moves. The patenting history of a competitor reveals the technology road map they are following and possible insight for their future moves. A comparative analysis of competitor’s patent portfolio could reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the competition's technological position.
Patent intelligence could provide answers to many important and valuable strategic questions. Following are the few questions which could be answered better from patent data analysis:
- How the competition is reacting to the organization's own patenting activity?
- How does the competi¬tion get around the organization's patents?
- How often are they cited in the competition's patent applications?
- What types of patents are the competition filing for that are built on the orga¬nization's patents?
- What are the sources of innovation, invention or protection derived from a globally diverse patent landscape?
- How to exclude competitors from sustainably differentiated products and portfolios?
- Identify correlations of technical approaches to user benefits, which could aid product development?
- How to find improvements designed for one industry that may be applied in another?
- Ways to turn weaknesses in ownership in strengths complemented by assets?
- Can we build a business cases for buy vs. build decisions that have higher margin, nearer term returns?
- Is IP an afterthought in product development, rather than a value-adding input?
- Are you put off exploring the IP landscape because it is simply too big?
- Would you like to be able to leverage IP to support business strategy?
A detailed analysis of patent portfolio could aids in revealing past patenting activities of the competition to decide areas where the organization can only design around existing patents (i.e., introduce incremental changes) and areas where they would have less competition. Patent citation trees can help management to find the parties who are applying for patents on improvements related to their own products, and thus incorporate in the portfolio projects for doing the same in relation to the competition's products. This will enhance the organization's bargaining power in negotiating cross-licenses if seeking a license is strategically required. In addition, patent visualization tools, which present a bird's-eye view of the patenting activity in a certain technological area, should be used in determining the areas where the organization will aim to develop next-generation and breakthrough products. Patent citations allow one to study spillovers, and to create indicators of the ‘‘importance’’ or technological impact of individual patents, thus introducing a way of capturing the enormous heterogeneity in the value of patents
Apart form these, patent intelligence could be used to answers various other types of questions of top management, R&D mangers, researchers, product managers, marketing mangers and many other divisions of a company.
- Who - Relationships between inventors, companies, attorneys, cited/citing parties
- When - Invention trends, assignment trends, dispute trends, publishing trends, research turnover trends, adoption trends
- Where - Geographic inventor output, geographic assignee output, regional strengths/weaknesses
- How - Approaches, uses, advantages, results of experiments
- Why - Motivations, applications, improvements, opportunities, investments, risks
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