Competitive and Technical Intelligence ToolBox

Patents create value for their owners in a variety of different ways. One of the biggest problems with nearly all patent valuation techniques is a failure to be explicit about what kind of value they are attempting to measure. It is essential to have an accurate model of value types in order to identify the source of the information that is needed, and also to formulate the correct approach for interpreting that information. The Four Kinds of Patent Value Patents basically allow the rights holder to pursue legal measures to prevent others from practicing the subject matter. This is the reason why many people are quick to point out that patents are only valuable in the way that they act as a blocking mechanism, and this is certainly true. However, although it is very important, it is not accurate to say that the value of a patent is purely a function of its enforceability. In practice, there are different ways to use patents to create value, and people are getting more creative about it...

Planning for a next generation product is a stunningly difficult problem. Most of the time there are multiple technology options from which to choose. Often, the options are incompletely documented. As a result, technology selection has been a very high-risk proposition and fails often. Many organizations listen to the voice of the customer and to marketing research to make product development decisions. However, the customer is not always right. Some organizations have chosen to reduce technology investment or R&D risks by relying more heavily on licensing or acquisition decisions. But, licensing or acquisition decisions bring other types of risk and require organizational assimilation skills that are also unusual. Reducing risk in technology selection, licensing or acquisition decisions requires careful, thoughtful analysis and some form of a technology roadmap.

Bulletproof protection Having bulletproof patent protection begins with the right strategy. It doesn't have to be expensive, you just have to plan ahead. Here are some simple strategies you can apply: 1. Write patent applications that have a broad scope. 2. Include all patentable subject matter: products, systems, processes, software and so on. 3. Use provisional patent applications as required. 4. Products falling under an umbrella of patents will usually be looked upon more favorably by licensees and partners. 5. Conduct a thorough patent search. By applying this simple strategy, you can save a lot of money and time. Just be thorough. Otherwise you may be launching a new market that will make it easy for competitors to enter and later on dominate. Patent tactics There are four basic patenting strategies you can apply. They are: 1) the shotgun approach; 2) the castle and moat theory; 3) cutting the forest, and; 4) patent-as-you-go. These strategies along with the fo...

The licensing approach used by smart inventors is based on partnering, not negotiating. We were the first to expose the partnership approach approach over ten years ago in our From Patent to Profit seminars. This licensing approach has produced millions, even billions in licensed sales. Here are just a few of the innovations licensed applying our partnership approach. It is interesting to see others trying to adopt our approach since its conception. Even invention promotion companies try to incorporate our knowledge and terminology into their websites and literature to try to make themselves look good. That shows how original they are. Foremost in a licensing strategy is whether the license will be exclusive or non-exclusive. If it's exclusive, what are the terms and conditions? Some key points to consider are: 1. How long will it be exclusive? 2. What performance guarantees must the licensee give? 3. What costs will you bear? 4. What competitive response will this caus...

The licensing plan First, you need to write down a specific plan. More specifically: 1. Develop a strategy. Will it be an exclusive or non-exclusive license? Will it be limited to various fields? Will it augment sales after your company launches the product? Will you be licensing a limited number licensees or staging them in? What incentives have you considered? 2. Do a SWOT analysis. This is a term used by licensing experts which means you need to analyze and evaluate your intellectual property’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This is important, because your licensees will do this and if you’re not prepared, you’ll not be able to handle their questions. With these two steps completed, you will want to start taking action. Next: 1. Find licensees. Use New Product Summaries and the methods discussed in the web pages on marketing inventions. 2. Research interested candidates. Once a candidate is identified, research it to better understand it. 3. Start with a term shee...

Licensing your inventions can be an exciting alternative to going into business. It's usually the best way to defray the high cost of development, manufacturing and marketing. What is a license? Simply stated, patents give you the exclusive right to manufacture, use and sell products falling under the scope of the patent. In turn, a license conveys those rights to others. A patent owner who conveys those rights is called the licensor. The company receiving the rights is the licensee. The agreement between the parties is called a license. The basic elements of a License are: 1. You grant a licensee for the rights to manufacture, use and sell products falling under the scope of your patents. 2. The licensee pays you royalties. 3. The licensee must actively promote your invention else its rights are terminated. 4. The licensee keeps records which you may review. Source

Dashboard is a term now being used generally to refer to a web-based technology page on which real time information is collated from various sources in the business. The metaphor of dashboard is adopted here to emphasize the nature of the data being displayed on the page; it is a real-time analysis as to how a business is operating, just like on an automobile dashboard real time information is displayed about the performance of that vehicle. Rapidly rising in popularity as the new "face" of business intelligence is the enterprise dashboard due to the user-centric nature of its visually-based approach. In many of the earlier "dashboard" applications the emphasis of creating a dashboard was the integration of information, but presently is more on generating actionable intelligence, thus enabling the strategic decision makers for better decisions. A digital dashboard is a customized solution for knowledge workers that consolidates personal, team, corpor...

The rise in the number of patents owned by major players in the market facilitated the emer­gence of a number of tools and methods that can be used to aid in obtaining patent and technol­ogy intelligence, and hence aid in directing the innovation process. These methods can help in providing directions for the innovation portfolio and perfecting the design of the product under development. Patent documents can be used as reservoirs of information that can be analyzed to assess the competitive position and expected competitive moves. The patenting history of a competitor reveals the technology road map they are following and provides insight as to future moves. Patent data analysis can also be used to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the competition's technological position. An examination of the file wrapper, for example, will reveal areas that the patentee agreed to limit and thus can provide guidance as to getting around a competitor's block­ing patents. The most valuabl...

Thousands of patents are filed every day, covering a wide range of products from new genetic sequences and the latest communications technology, to eccentric inventions such as concentrated beer tablets, nappies for pet birds, and Chinese herbal medicines for purging evil and curing death! Patents are a valuable source of information for companies wishing to be at the forefront of their technology, but how do they keep up with the constant onslaught of new patents and sort the useful from the frankly wacky? This is where Derwent Information comes in. The role of an analyst is to summarise the content of a patent to produce a clear and concise abstract, identifying key areas of interest, such as what is new and the use and advantages of the invention. The analyst must then classify, code, and index the patent according to the subject area, which enables customers to quickly find patents of interest. When I first started, most of my time was spent training. This involved learning more ab...

The specification, which is also called the disclosure, is a written description of an invention. The patent specification is drafted both to satisfy the written requirements for patentability, as well as to define the scope of the claims. While the layout of a specification varies from place to place, it is relatively consistent between the U.S. and Europe, except that B and C are unique to the U.S. For the purposes of this tutorial, the claims are described separately from the specification. The sections of a patent specification are: A. Title of the invention . The title of the invention is designed to describe the essence of the invention in a few words. B. Cross-reference to related applications. In the U.S., it is required that a patent applicant include a section titled "cross-reference to related applications". In this section, the applicant lists any provisional patent applications that they are claiming priority to, or if the application is a continuation...

What are Claims? The claims are the most important part of a patent application. The goal of the claims is to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the applicant regards as his or her invention. There must be at least one claim in a patent, and the reasoning is that possible infringers must be able to understand what is and is not protected based on the claims. Parts of a Claim A claim is generally presented in three parts, the preamble, a transitional phrase (or word), and the body. Preamble : The preamble is an introductory statement that names the invention that is to be claimed. For example, "A method for making a genetically modified plant." Transitional Phrase : The transitional phrase (or word) specifies whether the claim is limited to only the elements listed, or whether the claim may cover items or processes that have additional elements. Commonly used transitional phrases include "comprising"and "consisting of". T...

A patent is only in force during its term and in its jurisdiction. When the patent term runs out, or if it is abandoned or invalidated in a particular jurisdiction, unless there is a continuation in force, the matter in the patent enters the public domain. For utility patents issued in the USA: * If the application from which the patent issued was filed on or after June 8, 1995, the patent term begins on the patent issue date and ends 20 years after the effective filing date of the application. Not the day before (though probably few would want to go to court about conduct occurring on 11:59 PM that last day). * If the application is a continuation, continuation-in-part or division of a prior application, then its effective filing date is the filing date of the earliest filed non-provisional application in the chain of applications. * Remember, if the earliest application filed was a provisional application, that filing date does not count as the earliest date. This is also true for ...

1. Since the Uruguay Round Agreements in 1994, many countries have enacted laws providing that the enforceable term of patent protection begins on the date of grant of a utility patent (durations may differ for other types of patents such as industrial design and plant cultivar patents), and ends 20 years from the filing date of the application. The 20 year term is a minimum for compliance to TRIPS Article 33, but nations may choose to grant longer terms. Some countries, such as the USA, have provisions for limited recovery for infringement occurring between the date of publication of the application and date of grant. 2. For patent applications filed prior to the adoption of conformity to the Uruguay Round, laws varied. For example, in the US patent term was 17 years from issue date, unrelated to the filing date. " Submarine" patent applications, chains of applications filed perhaps many years previously but on which patents had not yet issued, could be an unknown quantity ...

"Freedom to operate", abbreviated "FTO", is usually used to mean determining whether a particular action, such as testing or commercialising a product, can be done without infringing valid intellectual property rights of others. Since IP rights are specific to different jurisdictions, a "freedom to operate" analysis should relate to particular countries or regions where you want to operate. If you want to commercialise a new variety of lentil seed in your own country, for example, you might have complete freedom to operate if there are no patents, plant variety rights, trademarks or other IP rights covering the seed, the process used to make it or the way you wish to market it or in your country. However, you might not have the same freedom to operate if you want to export the seed to another country, where patents or other IP rights may have been issued covering the plant genotype, methods, etc. Determining whether there is freedom to operate in any parti...

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Prior art (also known as or state of the art) includes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality. What can be prior art? Any publication, in any form, in principle qualifies as prior art. It includes, patents, scientific publications, textbooks, newspapers, lectures, demonstrations and exhibitions and any other disclosures. Also, the intended audience for the publication is mostly irrelevant. Whether an invention is described in a highly technical electrical engineer's journal, or in a junior high school textbook, does not matter. The textbook counts as prior art just like the journal, if both were published before the filing date of the patent application. Publicly available products also count as prior art, even though it may be very difficult to determine exactly what the product is made of or how it works. If a device is put on the market before the patent application...

General search engines like Google have changed the world of the Internet. But if you're looking for science-specific results, Scirus is about to change your professional life. SCIRUS have made this science to filter out non-scientific information. So you won't end up in a Tennessee attraction park after entering 'Dolly'. Evidence? Do the Scirus-Google test now. And find out how less leads to more. Scirus is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine available on the Internet, linking to more than 167 million indexed scientific pages and documents. With Scirus you can search through a variety of sources, such as Medline, ScienceDirect, BioMedCentral, preprint servers, patents and web sites relevant for your research. Scirus helps you save time and speed up research. Enhanced efficiency and advanced functionality help you search on specific bibliographical information or within specific sources. The refine terms help you quickly select terms that improve the...

Steps to protect ownership of IP filled circle Employee agreements: secure invention assignments filled circle Confidentiality agreements filled circle Records: keep proper laboratory documentation that supports your ownership and dates of invention filled circle Material transfer agreements: limit the ways in which your partners can use the biological samples you supply Technology audit: know what is yours filled circle Identify key developments, products, processes, know-how, and trade secrets filled circle Identify your core technologies that require protection filled circle Learn what can be protected and what cannot filled circle Identify the intellectual property you need that is, or may be, owned by others filled circle Recognize which aspects of your core technology are in the public domain Build and maintain a valuable IP portfolio filled circle Match your strategic goals with your proprietary rights filled circle Claim early, claim often, and update patent applicat...

Putting in place a sound strategy for protecting and maximizing a company's intellectual property can boost its future value , say Steven Meltzer, Michelle Marks, and James McCormick. This article suggests ten basic steps that you can take to build a solid IP foundation that will help attract funding from investors Step 1: Identify your core technologies Step 2: Audit your technology, understand your rights Step 3: Gauge your chances of IP protection Step 4: Get employees to assign inventions to the company Step 5: Implement non-competition and confidentiality agreements Step 6: Establish procedures to protect your IP rights Step 7: Use patent applications offensively and defensively Step 8: Focus on the scope of your claims Step 9: Keep informed of your competitors' rights Step 10: Seek low-cost revenue opportunities Link to full text of article

The application of guidelines linked to the concept of drug-likeness, such as the 'rule of five', has gained wide acceptance as an approach to reduce attrition in drug discovery and development. However, despite this acceptance, analysis of recent trends reveals that the physical properties of molecules that are currently being synthesized in leading drug discovery companies differ significantly from those of recently discovered oral drugs and compounds in clinical development. The consequences of the marked increase in lipophilicity — the most important drug-like physical property — include a greater likelihood of lack of selectivity and attrition in drug development. Tackling the threat of compound-related toxicological attrition needs to move to the mainstream of medicinal chemistry decision-making. Link to article