What Are The Patent Validity Search and Invalidity Search Services for Business?

 

Do you know why businesses take patent invalidity/validity search services? The patent invalidity search services are performed for businesses that want to defend themselves from licensing, infringement, or some other scenario. This kind of search also helps businesses at the time of acquisition and mergers and valuation or licensing.

Now let us know what Patent Invalidity Search is.

The patent invalidation mainly deals with insightful analysis of all the relevant documents before filing the granted patent. The procedure indulges related prior art documents to invalidate granted patent. Patent invalidation is mainly utilized as a defensive tool when an organization is concerned about the infringement of a specific patent. There are various circumstances for which an invalidation search needs to be performed. 

In some scenarios, if a patent infringer is endangered, the infringer might opt for invalidation to overcome the damages enforced on the infringer. But, in other cases, the patent owner might refuse to license the patent for a different reason. Some other individuals taking licenses might aim to invalidate the patent to use the invention. There are various circumstances due to which invalidity study is essential.

With the help of invalidity patent study, organizations can unveil issued patents and published prior art, which might create an issue for a patent to be partially or completely invalidated. A patent invalidation study is conducted to limit the patent's scope and cause the granted patent to be invalid. Additionally, this search involves a strict timeline as prior art documents are dated before filing patent data. 

How is the report of Invalidity Search Formulated?

Most of the invalidation study reports mainly consist of a claim mapping chart, a comprehensive techno-legal analysis of mapping one or more patent claims to a specific product feature, technical details, or another technical document. The claim mapping incorporates the procedure of assessing every independent claim and mapping elements of the independent claim to prior art documents.  

Once independent claims are mapped thoroughly, the mapping of some related dependent claims and whole patents is mapped, which incorporates description and diagrams. Some non-patent literature, including technical documents and journals, are also evaluated to check any related prior art documents.

The invalidity search provider company strategizes the searches as well as reports. All the invalidation cases are processes using applicable strategies, and patents might get invalided as per different aspects. Some ground invalidation incorporates:

• Content inconsistency within the document of the patent.
• Claiming for a subject matter presented in the prior art.
• Getting a grant for the invention which does not match eligibility criteria.
• False data present in a patent.
• Claims do not describe invention clearly.
• Absence of complete invention disclosure.

What is Validity Search?

The validity search is performed for various reasons. In a few cases like acquisition or merger or licensing patent portfolio, a patent validity study is performed to know the portfolio's strength or patent's validity and strength. Also, a validity search can be done in IP Due Diligence cases. Suppose a company wants to acquire some other company and patents from some assets of the company. In that case, a patent validity search is performed to check the patents of the company and the complete valuation of the organization. 

Conclusion

Whether you want to get patent invalidity or validity search services, you can rely on Ingenious e-Brain solution, an Intellectual Property search provider company with highly experienced analysts. They possess in-depth experience in offering IP services with complete analytics.

 

Competitive Analysis: Objectives and how it helps in business strategy

 

As the business enhances, competitive analysis becomes much crucial. Most organizations conduct competitive analysis at the product, company, or strategic business levels. 

Due to its advantages, it can be applied to all the business. Moreover, the aim of a competitive analysis is widespread, yet most famous for the start-up and an established company.

What is Competitive Analysis?

 

Competitive analysis is a strategy through which a business recognizes main competitors and researches their sales, products, and marketing strategies. With competitive analysis, a company can create robust strategies for which makes them ahead of their competitors. It helps in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Additionally, it assists the business in creating a refined strategy.

 

Importance of conducting Competitive Analysis:

·              Provides an understanding of how your potential and existing customers rate competition.

·              Provides a mechanism to build a solid business strategy in your target market.

·              Assist with the idea of what offers your company an advantage over the competitors.

·              Give an idea of what your customers are demanding.

·              Helps in making the strategies to expand business in a new market.

 

3 Objectives of Competitive Analysis 

Below are three main goals of the competitive analysis described:

1. Understanding Comparative Advantage 

The initial aim of competitive analysis becomes crystal clear when you optimize your direct competition. Once you research your competitors, their product portfolio, and products, you come to understand where your organization stands against them.

This comparative research will provide insight into two things:

·              When are you ahead of your competitors, and what business benefits do you hold?

·              Where is your competitor strong, and what benefits it holds? Where is your competitor unbeatable?

The above points make sure that you understand your business position in the market. Additionally, this research can be used afterward at the 3rd stage.

 

2.      Knowing the strategies of Competitor

Let's take an instance when you play chess against the same person, again and again; you start to recognize the moves they make. The same happens in badminton, table tennis, carrom, and other sports.

The same happens in the business- if you know everything about your competitor, like you know their past movements and their new position in the market. Then, it is easy for you to determine their next move in the market.  

You can understand the competitor's resources, their abilities, individuals driving their business. So, you also need to know what individuals working in the company are capable of. It will ensure that you can determine the movement of your competitors. And when you can quickly learn their progress, you can easily beat them.

The second aim of a competitive analysis is to determine what your competitors might strategize. It immensely assists you in the third phase.

3.      Strategy Selection 

It is the essential and last aim of competitive analysis. Whatever direction your business move, you are required to make several decisions before moving in that way. Thus, implementing the business strategies requires spending a tremendous amount of money and time, which is not easy to recover.  

But, an organization needs to move ahead to be on the top. Thus, this final aim of the competitive analysis helps select the right strategy for businesses to move forward. In the initial stage, you evaluated your competitors and did the comparative analysis. In the second aim, you know about their past movements and current position in the market.

In the last aim, utilizing the first two aims, you can know which strategy is perfect for implementing such that you can capture the market share of competition or expand your business in new regions.

Lastly, the objectives of competitive analysis include three main points:

·         Conducting comparative research of your domain

·         Research about your competitors closely

·         Select the right strategy which helps in beating your competitors

Whether you are the smallest organization or big enterprise, these three objectives of competitive analysis can help you defeat your competitors.

 

How to check competitive information?

Once you have accumulated all the information of your competitors, now its time to analyze the data.

 

Analyze your competitor’s product features and advantages

Initiate by making the list of the product features and their benefits in order of importance and make a table to display whether or not every competitor fulfills them. Apply a checkmark to see which of your competitor has which benefits and features. The features are mainly straightforward. Either a competitor product holds it, or it doesn't. But benefits, on the other hand, are not as simple and need to determine as per the feedback of the customers.

Now, utilize this table to analyze your competitor's service or product and compare them with your business. What benefits and features are unique about your product? The more exclusive benefits and features your product hold, the stronger will be your market position.

Evaluate your competitors Market Share

The mainly used measure of the performance of sales is market share. Your competitor might not offer the best service or product, yet if they produce many sales in the market. They might:

·         Define the standards for a specific service or product

·         Impact popular vision of the service or product

·         Devote resources to maintain their share in the market

 

Other Critical Factors to Consider 

The preference of the customer is the only part of the research. Consider some other crucial factors like:

·         Financial Resources- Are they witnessing financial setbacks? How are they funding novice product development and enhancement?

·         Price- Is better to look for the trends in pricing rather than monetary gain and loss. 

·         Operation Efficiency – Check if they can save time and cost with solid production and delivery strategies.

·         Strategic Partnership- What kind of relationship do they hold with other organizations?

·         Company Morale Personnel- What are the commitment, motivation, and productivity levels of their employees? 

 

Conclusion 

Do you want your business to stay ahead of your competitors? Then, competitive analysis is one of the most critical services your business needs. If you are looking for professional experts to gauge your competitors, then hire, Ingenious e-Brain who has enriched experience in offering competitive analysis services. Our analysis will help you make the right strategy for your business and increase business productivity. 

 

When is Freedom to Operate Analysis Cost-Effective?

 

Most organizations nowadays have recognized the value of taking the patents on the inventions before launching a product. Getting the patents of your invention adds value to the bottom line by enhancing intangible assets and providing your company with big-headed rights. The patent mainly enhances the power of your company in the marketplace and stops your competitors from using your invention without permission.

Less obvious but equally important are the advantages of product clearance, also known as Freedom to Operate.

FTO analysis incorporates recognizing and analyzing patents of others that might subject your organization to patent-infringement liability. Performing FTO analysis before launching and developing a product or acquiring a new company, your organization can avoid the risk of future litigation and minimize unnecessary expense. The FTO analysis done early in the stage of product development affords the company to change the design and reduce infringement.

Despite as an advantage, FTO analysis also can recognize the opportunities for patenting or future development. Identically, performing FTO analysis as a part of due diligence enables us to steer clear about an opportunity filled with the risk of litigation.

The Freedom to Operate search starts with an assessment of service or product. Which are the new components in the product visible to the public and likely to bring analysis? Does any of them subject to an existing license? Do any components create under agreements that incorporate any indemnification clauses? Do products or services differentiate from country to country? Simultaneously, a clearance search is done for the published applications or unexpired patents which might claim several components. At last, an experienced patent provider can analyze the data and conclude on risk while going forward with service, product, or any acquisition.

It is crucial to know that FTO analysis can not guarantee that your organization will not be sued. The applications and patents recognized mainly depend on the search quality, and the degree of relevance of every application or patent will be subjected to clarification. Some applications by others are on the file but not published at search time, so they are not considered at the research part.

As FTO study is expensive and time-consuming, most organizations select where and when to do FTP study to reduce the risk and boost value. Here are some factors which can enhance the decision:

1.      Consider product value and investment amount

As an initial step, it is crucial to consider the service or product acquired or launched in terms of its value to the organization. What is projected revenue? Is this product can offer high or low-margin profit

The products that have high volume or high margin are probable to lead to more damage. Thus, it is more worthy of taking an extra step and clear product before proceeding. The products in this incorporate cell phones or television. If an organization has a restricted amount to spend for clearance, then the product can be least ranked in value terms.

The services or product needed an investment relevant to the company’s overall research and development budget. Freedom to Operate outcome might be utilized to lessen costs or enable time for designing any recognized patents. For the products that need less investment, the FTO study is delayed ending of the product launch but needs to be done before product release.

2.     Check whether identical products have Flickered Litigation

If your company is thinking of launching a product or service in the competitive market, getting FTO analysis done is ideal. If you are preparing for a high-profile launch of some new service or product, it is better to identify the risk before the launch.  

3.     Check competitive community for the product

How large and how drenched in the market? How many competitors are providing, and what is the history among players in the area? Is domain litigious, like TV and cell phone domains, or are challenges mainly from non-competitors? In this scenario, FTO analysis can reveal the patents in those litigations.

If your organization has technical individuals and developers, then you probably will get a great source of information. Ask some related businesses to recognize entities they believe might be highly motivated to keep the proposed new product off the market and as technical individuals whose competitors closely resemble your product. It is highly common in the marketplace for the development to get inspired from the competitors.

4.     Consider Sources

What if you are sourcing all or some of your services or products from some other company? Don’t you think that organization bears the risk of patent infringement? Well, it does not always work this way. The marketing and selling of a company product are done under their private label products, mainly manufactured under the contract y others for the organization under their brand.

What are the objectives and risk tolerance of your business?

Prior to taking any FTO analysis, an organization must give some serious thoughts on how they can handle the results. Does the organization seek to avoid all the litigations at all costs? Are they ready to walk away if a new product, service, or acquisition is unfavorable?

If any organization goes ahead without considering the results, then FTO analysis might not be effective. This results in the organization being completely comfortable with all litigation risks and the possibility it will require collecting required resources to defend. With all this in mind, this tactic rarely seems pragmatic.

Conclusion

Analysis of FTO plays a significant role in the IP strategy. It enables an organization to recognize, reduce, and handle risk while simultaneously identifying the fields where the patent coverage is unavailable and thus present the opportunities.

The only side to the regular FTO analysis on all the products is cost. As few organizations only have an unlimited budget for the legal fees, most of the organizations consider the level of the FTO analysis on new acquisitions and products in their budget and risk tolerance. Having an experienced patent attorney can assist in creating a policy that is right for your organization. 

Understanding Market Intelligence: Description and Advantages

 

Market intelligence is the information or data derived by any organization from its market or the market the company plans to enter. This information helps make decisions about market segmentation, market opportunities, market metrics, and market penetration knowledge.

Market intelligence is undeniably an essential aspect of understanding the market's current state and its related prospects. Along with this, the study helps to get an idea about competitor intelligence. This knowledge, in turn, aids in gaining a competitive edge in the targeted market.

Practical marketing intelligence efforts can lead to increased ROI and improved campaigns. The term is often confused with two different business-related studies, business intelligence, and marketing research.

Marketing research focuses entirely on an organization's efforts to gain clarity into business campaigns without considering external factors. On the other hand, Business intelligence focuses on gathering data across various business functions and dimensions to optimize its efficiency for all its departments and locations effectively.

Market Research study involves various steps. These are:

1. Identifying the problem
2. Developing a research strategy
3. Performing intensive research
4. Analyzing results
5. Finding good reports
6. Taking appropriate action

Why should a company invests in a Market Intelligence study?

Market intelligence is vital to any organization's success. It is the foundation of effective marketing. The overall process involves steps like data collection, analysis, and final use of the derived information.

Market intelligence helps companies distinguish themselves from their competitors and provides valuable insights to stay in the game and excel at it. Mentioned below are some of the cons that market intelligence offers.

• Ensures customer retention – Irrespective of how old a client is to a company; it is monitored regularly and attacked by other companies in the same domain. They attempt to understand when the customer is dissatisfied with the services and prevent losing its valued customers. Market intelligence can help the company analyze and obtain insights into diverse areas of improvements needed by the consumers and help the company retain and better understand the customer expectations.
• Gives a competitive advantage – Deciding the best opportunity to launch a product in the market is one of the benefits of market intelligence. This knowledge helps the respective company keep a watch on its competing businesses and upcoming market trends. Considering all this, the company gets a picture of the market, which allows it to make mindful decisions about penetrating the market and ways to capture a high market share by product/feature launch. Thus, providing them a competitive advantage.
• Enhanced process efficiency – Market intelligence helps businesses boost their overall productivity by recognizing gaps, giving in-depth insights to suggest useful strategies, and providing real-time data and valuable analytics.
• Improved sales process – Businesses with various products and many consumers often face a problem relating to which product to target to which sectors. In this, market intelligence results help the company successfully determine the market segmentation, thus letting it decide which product will flourish in which market.
• Holistic idea of the market – Understanding the market in its entirety can lead a company to success in a relatively lesser time. Market intelligence involves gathering real-time data from the market and understanding the customers, trends, behaviors, etc. This feat enables a company to remain competitive and meet market demands.

Market intelligence helps the company become more consumer-centric, better understand market demands, and consumers' opinions. Its other uses include collecting relevant real-time data, boosting upselling opportunities, reducing risks, capturing higher market shares, and giving a competitive edge. All these benefits are indispensable to the success of a company. Hence, market intelligence is one of the most crucial constituents in executing effective strategies for a business's prosperity in the market.

Delineating The Dimensions Of FTO Search

Freedom to Operate (FTO) analysis is an elaborated search strategy to ascertain that a particular product, service, or service is not infringing on the existing patent(s) owned by others. This search affirms whether the product is commercially considered ‘safe.’ for launching in a particular market and does not violate existing third-party rights.  An FTO search includes screening a broad range of documents, including expired and expired patents. 

The team conducts the FTO search for a prospected innovation at various stages till its commercialization. The search for patent documents that are potential threats is either completed once or often during the product/innovation development cycle.

Different IP Counsels base the decision to go for a one-time FTO search or recurring FTO search on several factors. The main determining factor for this decision-making is the speculated time required for the product’s research and commercialization. In general, the products or features that need a shorter research time of around 8-10 months can rely upon a one-time FTO search result. This single FTO search is, in most cases, conducted just after the patentability search at the start of the development process. On the other hands, the products requiring a longer time for research need to regularly perform FTO searches to ensure that no related patents have been filed in that timespan between FTO study and final product launch.

The relevance of performing FTO search

FTO analyses are conducted for a wide range of reasons and by different parties. Conducting an FTO search just after the patentability search rules out the several risks relating to the infringement litigation that can come up at the final innovation stages.

Another important use of performing FTO search is in making ‘Research tree decisions.’ For any innovation, several potential research paths are considered technologically possible. An intensively performed FTO search can help choose a research pathway with the least third-party IP to reduce the risk of potential litigations and to license royalties maximally.

Ways to steer past the challenges

FTO analyses by screening the available patent documents are the first step. If the investigation results reveal that one or more patents can potentially pose a risk in commercializing the product, then the respective company’s IP counsel set out to devise the strategies to bypass the challenge.

There are several options for this, like:

·       Licensing In or Purchasing the patent: Licensing involves deriving an authorization in the written form stating the patent owner’s agreement to use his patented technology for the specified product. All the terms and conditions for usage, including time and targeted market, are defined. Though this method involves paying a lump-sum amount to the patent holder, this is considered the most straightforward way out of the situation.

·  Cross-licensing: This mode involves the exchange of patent licenses between the partnering companies. The pre-requisite for this method is a well-protected patent portfolio of the potential licensing companies that is useful to its partners.

·   Patent pools: This is a common practice observed with companies manufacturing related products. The aim is to pool the patents; it is similar to a clearinghouse for patent rights and helps the partnering companies avoid the long process of acquiring permission to use the patented technology.

·   Inventing around: Another alternative is to Invent around the patent. It involves making changes to the prospected technologies in the development of the product. If the company successfully finds a working alternative, it is saved from paying heavy amounts for licensing the patented technology.

Conclusion

Every company must compulsorily conduct FTO analyses at the very early stages of any product, process, or service development cycle. This feat is to mitigate the third-party IP  from hindering the successful commercialization of the product. The steps involved include searching for any related patent, trademark, or copyright and obtaining legal insight about the patent’s noninfringement and invalidity.

In case certain overlapping technologies or processes are pointed out in the previously patented literature, the experts, improvise the most effective way to bypass the challenge.

6 Steps To Become A Better Scout

 

Technology scouting's primary goal is to help small and medium-sized businesses identify emerging innovations, channel tech-related data into the organization, and promote inexperienced technology in a corporate setting. At Ingenious e-Brain, we combine our knowledge, analysis, and tried-and-true processes to map out the innovations that will influence your business. Here are few tips to help you become a technology scout :

1. Identification of Emerging technology: Understand prevalent technologies and products in the domain identify new technology opportunities that the company has not tapped into.

2. Gathering Information from information sources: Choose the sources of knowledge and the tools to use. Formal and informal sources of information may be distinguished. Informal sources are particularly useful for detecting discontinuities and high-level areas of technical change. Formal sources have the advantage of allowing automated knowledge searches, such as database searches using predefined algorithms. These sources are usually paid or open-source databases. The information is collected through journals, technology reports, studies, and other databases such as Orbit Questel, Derwent Innovations, seminars, and conferences.

3. Data collection: Data is gathered and often saved for later study. You can gather more data and pick more important information using their technical skills and understanding of its needs by utilizing a broader network.

4. Data Analysis: Filtration, analysis, and interpretation of collected data is carried out. It is believed that a better analysis takes place in the collaborated team of scouts and those receiving the information.

5. Technology Mapping: In this step, you map identified technologies to the client's need or requirement on how and where they can utilize identified solutions or technologies to streamline their processes and earn more profits.

6. Technologies from Adjacent Industries: Finally, in this step, you will find technologies available from adjoining industries or domains that could be used for better process outcomes by the client company.

 

In our experience, we have found that the above steps effectively carry out technology scouting services.

 

If you have any questions or want to know, then we can help your business with its innovation challenges, get in touch with us here or email us at services@iebrain.com.

How do you locate the product/standard for an infringement search?

Companies and individuals take aggressive steps to protect their patent rights. Most often, if a patent holder discovers that a product or a process is disrupting his patent rights, he might face damages from the infringing party. Such implementation of patent rights is usual in developed economies, such as the US and Europe. However, even India has seen its share of attempts to enforce patent rights.

Generally, one may recognize that his product may be infringing on a patent(s) by carrying out the freedom to operate study (our article on the freedom to operate) and an infringement analysis (our article on infringement analysis). Contrarily, a patent holder might have informed you that your product is infringing his patent and asks you to stop all activities relating to the infringing product. So the question now is how you found out?

Some of the best practices which we adopt to locate products & standards are as follows:

 

1. Search based on Potential Infringer List of products: Based on subject patents, the subject matters expert prepares a list of potential infringer/Infringing products based on bibliography data, potential competitor & potential products based on an open search across similar products/technology infringers.
2. Product Document/datasheets/manual Based Search: The features of claims are searched on infringer websites. Google search, Google image search, consortium, if any, etc.
3. Video-Based search: A open search is performed on YouTube and another potential infringer website to locate the evidence.
4. Standard-based Search: In the case of a standard-based infringement, a search is performed on portals like IEEE, 3GPP, ETSI, IETE, ITU, JEDEC, MPGLA, etc.
5. Product Tear Down: Sometimes, claim features require teardown documents such as for semiconductor/circuit-based claims. If teardown is freely available, we use these teardowns else, based on client approval and teardown documents are purchased to locate the evidence.
6. Image Search: Sometimes, for design search, google image searches are preferred to locate the evidence.
7. Input /Output Testing: In some cases, product testing is required, and we have a lab set-up for product testing, mainly on the software side and marginally on the hardware side.
8. Source code: Source code review is another method to locate the evidence, and we do source ode review wherever possible.
9. Packet Snipping: Sometimes, evidence can’t be retrieved, such as the type of server used in streaming videos; in such cases, we snip the packet over the network for a particular application to use the evidence in the claim chart.
10. Product Sales office: At times, we are sure the particular product is infringing, but due to lack of evidence, we cannot prove the infringement. In such cases, we contact the product infringing company and try to pull out evidence but collecting product manuals from the sales office.

Please feel free to check our patent infringement services page to determine if we can cater to your patent requirements. You can contact us to explore the option of working together.

I hope you found this article is helpful.