Back before the Internet, you accumulated a lot of steps and frequent flier miles searching for prior art. You had to hoof it to a patent office—in Washington, DC, not down the street! It made for fun trips to our nation’s capital, but added time and expense to the job. Once there, you’d spend your time finding and manually reviewing the Manuals of Classifications. You’d lug a pushcart to the stacks. And you’d pull all the patent doc ... Read More
How Popular Patents Come to Life: Scrub Daddy’s Shark Tank and IP Success Story
Since the 2012 season of Shark Tank, when cast member Lori Greiner offered Scrub Daddy founder Aaron Krause $200,000 for a 20% stake in the company, Scrub Daddy has sold more than 10 million sponges, reaping more than $50 million in sales and becoming Shark Tank’s most successful product ever. The smiley-faced sponge has eyes that grip fingers and a mouth that cleans both sides of utensils. Its proprietary material changes texture i ... Read More
Top 8 Trends from PIUG 2017
By: Devin Salmon, Patent Analyst, IP.com On May 20 – 25, the 2017 Patent Information Users Group (PIUG) Annual Conference was held outside Atlanta, GA. This conference is a place for patent researchers and other patent professionals to share knowledge and gain new skills. It is also where the software/solution providers come to show off what’s new in their tools, which is an opportunity for attendees to learn about all the diff ... Read More
Write a Rock-Solid Patent: Best Practices for Increasing Approvals and Eliminating Threats
By: Katherine (Katie) McGuire, Esq., Registered Patent Attorney; Partner, Woods Oviatt Gilman LLP; Chair, Intellectual Property Practice Group Writing patents is an art, and an evolving one at that—and it takes years, even decades, to master. That’s why I recommend hiring a registered patent attorney or patent agent to draft your patents, which can help you avoid getting a warning from the patent examiner.* Either way, new pate ... Read More
“No Trespassing” Signs for Creations of the Mind: Why Patents are Your Most Important Assets
By: Katherine (Katie) McGuire, Esq., Registered Patent Attorney; Partner, Woods Oviatt Gilman LLP; Chair, Intellectual Property Practice Group In the past few decades, the Information Age has evolved to the point that Wall Street puts a laser-like focus on intangible assets when evaluating technology-based companies. To remain competitive, you have to protect your intangible assets—specifically, your intellectual capital. One way ... Read More
InnovationQ Tips: Viewing and Interpreting the Competitive Landscape
When conducting searches in the patent space, one way to use the data gathered is for competitive intelligence. By discovering the competitive landscape, you can better answer questions such as:
- Who are the major players in the field?
- What areas should I consider investing in?
- Should I acquire a license?
- Are my patents in certain technology spaces more likely to be infringed?
8 Inventions That Were Patented on April 26th
In honor of World Intellectual Property Day, we wanted to share eight interesting inventions that were patented on April 26th.
1. 1892 – Sara Boone patented an ironing board. [1]
2. 1901 – Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company patented improvements ... Read More
Why Consider IP.com’s Prior Art Search Team?
Here's a short graphic on just three reasons why we think our Prior Art Search Team stands out:
... Read More
Two Patent Search Brains Are Better Than One
Two Patent Search Brains Are Better Than One: The benefits of combining semantic and Boolean engines By: Nasreen Bakht Brady, Client Engagement Director at IP.com If you’re like a lot of patent professionals, you’ve lost more than a few hours of sleep worrying about missing an important piece of prior art. Because one critical miss can cost your company billions of dollars. And the risk is real whe ... Read More
InnovationQ Tips: Setting Litigation Alerts on a Technology Space
Statute tells us what is patentable subject matter, but as technology and the world evolve, so must the law. Patent litigation has had a great effect on what is deemed patentable subject matter. Surely when patent cases occur in your technology space, it is of huge interest, as it may shape how and what you can patent. Think back to 2007, when CLS Bank International and CLS Services Ltd (CLS Bank) filed suite against Alice Corporation for a decla ... Read More
InnovationQ Tips: Selected Results vs. Results Button
When conducting intellectual property research, users often need to generate exports or reports for deeper analysis and collaboration with others. The exports and reports found in IP.com’s semantic search tool, InnovationQ, have always been a customer favorite with the ability to download a wide variety of file types and prepackaged templates. Recent releases have addressed requests from users for additional customization of the Microsoft Ex ... Read More
Do You Need a Patent Review Committee?
At many organizations, this collaboration is done informally, but creating a more formal review committee can enhance the IP portfolio management process. At its core, a patent review committee can get different parts of the company talking to each other and thinking about the role that intellectual property and continuous innovation plays in the health and growth of the business. Review committees are typically comprised of representatives f ... Read More
Assessing the Quality of Patents: 3 Key Metrics
An important element of patent portfolio management involves assessing the value of issued patents. After all, if you don’t have some idea about what a patent is worth in the context of your business or industry, it’s hard to make strategic investment decisions about your intellectual property. Patent valuation is determined by three critical drivers: legal strength, technology strength, and commercial value. Legal strength:Read More
Freedom to Operate: Protecting IP Assets Against Patent Infringement
No one wants to end up on the wrong end of a patent infringement lawsuit. Even if you prevail, defending infringement claims can drain your business of important resources. That’s why a Freedom-To-Operate (FTO) search is a critical step before bringing new products or features to market. FTO search, also known as a right to use search, clearance search, or patent infringement risk assessment, is a due-diligence process to uncover any in-forc ... Read More
Patentability Search: Why You Need to Look Beyond Major Patent Offices
Is your invention unique enough to warrant a patent? Searching databases from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, European Patent Office, and other government organizations may not be enough to determine the novelty of your product, process, or technology. There’s a vast amount of non-patent literature that will have an impact on your ... Read More
How to Turn Patent Search Into Business Intelligence
As intellectual property (IP) assets become an increasingly important driver of competitive advantage, companies are looking for better ways to mine their IP for business intelligence. Patent landscaping is an effective way to analyze patent portfolios and extract the types of insights that guide business strategies. Patent landscaping involves a detailed state-of-the-art search that provides a competitive view of an industry, market segment ... Read More
Patent Mapping: A Better Way to Visualize IP Opportunities and Risks
One of the more interesting trends to emerge from the big data movement is the rise in data visualization tools. The market for data visualization applications, which enable users to present and interact with large data sets in a visual way, is expected to grow from $4.1 billion to $6.4 billion over the next five years. Driving this growth is t ... Read More
5 Ways to Turn Your IP Into New Sources of Revenue
Research by intellectual capital firm Ocean Tomo shows that, on average, 80% of a company’s value comes from intangible assets, and that patented technology makes up a significant portion of this intangible value. Are you doing everything you can to turn those intangible assets into revenue opportunities? There are five primary ways to monetize as ... Read More
5 Search Methods to Improve IP Portfolio Management
Successfully managing your organization’s intellectual property requires more than just unleashing analysts and lawyers on public patent databases. Advanced patent portfolio management involves five distinct search methods, each of which contributes important insights that can help you make quicker, more informed business decisions about your intellectual property assets. 1.Patentability: Patentability search helps you discover and identify ... Read More
3 Reasons for Early-Stage Companies to Prepare Their IP
Managing Intellectual property (IP) is not only confusing if you are a new company, but can also be intimidating. You have ideas in front of you, but how do you know what is patentable? Should you just defensively publish? Trademark or copyright? If you are going to succeed and move forward, then you must pay attention and address these questions. Why? Because the sooner you, as an early-stage company, address IP-related matters, the better pr ... Read More
What Are the Benefits of Publishing Prior Art?
Defensive publishing is a cost-effective method to protect technology without applying for patents. Publishing documents that establish your innovation as “prior art” in the public domain can decrease unnecessary patent expenses for innovations that have operational but non-commercial value to your organization. Publishing prior art also blocks competitors from obtaining a patent on technology described by the documents you’ve published. ... Read More
How Defensive Publishing Strengthens Your Patent Portfolio
Since the early 1980s, the number of patents granted on software-based inventions has increased by 1,900%, resulting in approximately 40,000 software-related patents issued annually. The frenzy behind this software patent glut needs to stop. Part of the problem is that many software patents merely cover incremental improvements to core technologies, wit ... Read More
3 Core Elements of Intellectual Property Strategy
Intellectual property (IP) assets have become the currency of business, used not just to protect technology rights, but also to gain competitive advantage and drive new revenue opportunities. In many organizations, however, there’s still a disconnect between IP strategy and business strategy. Outdated IP tools and processes can increase a company’s exposure to risk (the number of patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. Read More