When your company stays aware of other’s developments, it knows from whom to purchase or license existing solutions, thereby avoiding re-innovating what is known, freeing-up company resources for creating true innovations, and accelerating product development and time to market.
Patent publications can serve as signals of emergent technologies, companies, and competitors. Fortunately, various analytical and visualization techniques have evolved to help spot those signals relatively easily. For example, I offer a monitoring service that can provide your company with periodic reports of new patent publications that mention a specific keyword, are classified within an identified technical field, and/or are associated with a particular company, innovator, or earlier patent publication.
Remember that not every gap in your company’s patent portfolio must be filled by your company’s own innovations. Sometimes it makes more sense to acquire or take a license to other’s patent rights. Just the same, your company will want to at least explore most of the gaps in your company’s portfolio and consider whether and how your company can easily fill them.
Similarly, when first exploring whether to pursue patent protection for an innovation, I generally recommend self-performing a brief innovation search to “knock out” your innovation from further consideration if it appears to be publicly known already. This step can help avoid wasting time preparing a detailed description of an innovation that is not patentable.
Re-inventing the wheel can be a costly proposition. While it may be initially disappointing to find your concept already “out there”, in the long run it could mean saving valuable time and resources, revealing opportunities, and inspiring improvements that could well be truly innovative.