How can fewer patents lead to a more efficient IP strategy?Type of Company: Privately held company
Industry: Electric motor design and manufacture
Company's IP Issues
Invention Repository:
As inventors of DC electric motors that have improved size, weight, and power,
the Company needed to create a formalized mechanism to capture and disclose
its IP.
IP Strategy/Business Strategy:
Because of the numerous applications for electric motors, the two major issues for the Company were:
- Determining which applications represented the greatest leverage opportunities;
and
- Aligning and focusing its business and IP strategies.
The Company's original mindset was to patent everything, regardless of the expense. As an alternative, it sought to create an IP strategy that would align its intellectual assets with its business strategy in order to ensure a commercial advantage and generate revenue.
ipCG Services
We began the process by generating an internal inventory of the Company's
IP (ipScan®), to identify existing IP and determine how it was being used
in the business. This process resulted in a long list of potential inventions
to be disclosed.
We conducted interviews and drafted 70-80 ipDisclosure® documents, many
of which were readily included as a critical aspect of patent applications.
We performed four separate competitive intelligence sessions (ipAnalytics®)
in which approximately 10,000 patents were analyzed in order to assess external
strengths and opportunities in the Company's technology and product space.
These results were combined with the internal IP inventory, and applied to a
visual representation of the technology space (ipLandscape®).
Benefit From ipCG Services
- Our ipDisclosure process saved the Company valuable time and money
by disclosing inventions in an expedient and consistent manner that could be
readily leveraged by executive reviewers and legal representatives.
- Our ipLandscape and ipAnalytics services assessed the Company's
product value expectations. We mapped concentrated areas of IP, along with white
spaces, and reported industry trends and technologies that have commercialization
potential.
- The Company's IP strategy is now aligned with its existing business
strategy, and its internal process for managing its IP is streamlined.
- ipCG helped the Company re-evaluate its product development approach,
select strategic invention spaces, and make intelligent decisions about how
to leverage its IP.
|
