Playbook for patent competitive intelligence and better business decisions

By Michael Bielski

Patents are valuable sources of competitive intelligence. Large patent datasets contain an overwhelming amount of information often making it difficult to extract value. However, extracted and organized properly, information contained in patents can be translated into valuable competitive intelligence that can help executives make better business decisions.

Patents can be a reliable source of competitive intelligence for one important reason - patents are expensive and require significant resources.

Therefore, technology that is patented often represents highly valued technology by the organization - technologies which most likely align with current or future products. This alignment is likely to increase in the future as organizations continue to develop and enhance their intellectual asset management (IAM) capabilities in an effort to eliminate ad-hoc patenting activity.

Developing a patent dataset

Patent datasets can be created in many ways. A patent dataset may be derived from the results of a freedom-to-operate analysis, or alternatively, from a broader search developed by creating search dataset terms around a particular technology area of interest.

Any competitive patent analysis must begin with a dataset of relevant patents; the more relevant the dataset the more accurate the competitive intelligence derived from that dataset will be. Human-reading a patent dataset for relevance is time consuming but highly recommended prior to making business decisions. Patent datasets derived solely from search terms may include patents that, after further review, are not really relevant to the product or technology space being studied.

Evaluating patent datasets: Important fields

Once a patent dataset is determined to contain patents of interest relative to the technology, product, or business area desired, information from various fields of the patent can be extracted for analysis.

Important areas to evaluate include:

Inventors
In the United States, inventors are defined as individuals who have contributed to the claimed invention. A patent may have multiple inventors, depending on how many individuals contributed to the claims of the patent. Inventors obviously have technical expertise in the technology area, however, inventors may or may not have an ownership interest in the legal rights of the patent.

TIP: Value in analyzing inventors - find out who the innovators are in your industry. Executives asking themselves, "Who are the innovators in my industry?" should do so while being cognizant of the following:

Recruitment
Prolific inventors are often prime candidates to recruit into your organization, especially in areas where your organization may lack technical expertise. Whereas, inventor analysis is not only useful for analyzing current products and technologies of an organization, but it is also useful to help determine products and technologies an organization could likely develop.

Competitive R&D strategy
Tracking an inventor's transition from one organization to another, by noting a change in the assignee on the inventor's patents, may yield information regarding competitor R&D strategies. Recent changes in the assignee a prolific inventor is working for should be monitored carefully - especially when prolific inventors move to a top business competitor.

Assignees
Assignees are entities and individuals that have an ownership interest in the legal rights a patent offers. An assignee is often the organization employing the inventor of the technology.

TIP: Value in analyzing assignees - find out which companies are patenting in your industry. Executives asking themselves, "Which companies are patenting in our industry?" should be cognizant of the following:

Identifying and assessing collaborators and partners
Analyzing the assignees in a relevant patent dataset provides valuable information in directing potential collaborations. Potential contract manufacturers, customers, suppliers, R&D partners, licensees, licensors, acquirers and acquisition targets may all be derived from analyzing the patent owners in a particular technology space. Importantly, contract manufacturers can be evaluated before, during and after an engagement to get a sense for 1.) how aggressive their IP strategy is and 2.) are they filing patents on invention that derives from the engagement.

Assessing business competitors
Business competitors are known product and technology competitors that are expected to have patents in the relevant technology space. Analyzing how many patents an organization's business competitors has allows executives to 1.) evaluate the relative IP investment made by their competitors, 2.) assess the dominant IP holders in the technology space, and 3.) assess collaborations between business competitors by evaluating co-assignees on patents.

Identifying and assessing IP competitors
It's important to note IP competitors can also include organizations that are not known product and technology competitors, however, they do have patents in the relevant technology space. Therefore, your business competitors may be different than your IP competitors. Executives need to understand IP competitors because 1.) they may be preparing to launch competitive products and transition into a business competitor, 2.) they may license their patents to another business competitor, and 3.) they may be more likely to litigate in non-core technology areas.

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