Remaining competitive within your industry requires almost constant monitoring of the intellectual property trends happening around you. There is a laundry list of questions you need answered: “What newly disclosed technologies are similar to mine?” “What are my core competitors patenting?” “Am I competing indirectly with other innovations?” “What new entrants are making their mark in the industry?”
A comprehensive patent search and analysis tool, like IP.com’s InnovationQ Plus®, can help you identify intellectual property trends and answer these questions and others like them with confidence. Saved searches and automated reporting within the platform allow you to quickly find the most up-to-date IP trends with ease. With InnovationQ Plus, these landscapes have the added benefit of visualization. Tools like Corporate Tree and semantic mapping allow the platform to turn patent data into identifiable IP trends and create a story you can share with everyone in your organization.
These three landscapes should inform every stage of your IP strategy, from innovation to monetization.
Patent Landscape
Keeping an eye on who is patenting in your space and what, exactly, they’re patenting, is essential for identifying how your industry is shifting. A patent landscape can identify emerging technologies and where white space still remains in your field. Regularly reviewing the patent landscape can uncover what your competitors are working on as well as any new entrants into your industry. These insights can protect you from being caught off guard when companies bring new products to market to compete with your own. Instead, you’ll have had time to consider how you might take advantage of the same intellectual property trends in a way that best fits your business and customers.
You may also find possible infringers, as well as opportunities for licensing, partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions.
Technology Landscape
Identifying trends within the technology landscape has many of the same benefits as a patent landscape. This type of IP research looks beyond patents for a more comprehensive overview of how both established and startup companies are innovating. Including non-patent literature widens the scope of your research to include documents like invention disclosures, conference papers, user guides, standards publications, and press releases.
This information is incredibly valuable because, unlike patents, these innovations are not protected. Not only are you learning about new technologies in your industry, but technologies you can potentially incorporate into your products and processes.
Competitive Landscape
Looking at the patents your closest competitors are applying for shows you what technology spaces they’re investing in. While this may sound straightforward, you may be surprised by the areas your competitors are innovating toward. This can give you valuable insight into their future monetization and marketing strategies.
Alternatively, looking at your technology landscape to see what entities are innovating in your industry can identify new competitors. You can then dive deeper into what these new entrants might mean for your competitive advantage both now and in the future.