Top applicants will extract the number of patent families per company (assignee). By default, the presented data shows all assignees. The user can group and rename different companies/subsidiaries in the section “List of assignees to investigate” by using drag & drop. These will be the companies to be presented in the analysis.

By using the slider on top, the user can select the number of companies to show in the plot.

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Comparing different companies technical strengths and focuses is a great way to get an overview of the competitive landscape. As the patent system is built up with the patent classification codes, these can be used to visualize different companies’ activities and their technical focus areas.

The technology analysis provides a general overview of which technical fields are the most relevant within the portfolio. It is a very important analysis, as the patent classifications that are assigned to a patent document by a patent examiner describe the technical area of the central part of the invention. As the process of assigning a patent classification to a patent document is done by a patent examiner, this part is not controlled by the filing company. A patent document’s title, abstract, and other written parts of a document can be misleading to reveal as little as possible. Thus, a technological classification system is an important key factor in clearly identifying the technological scope of a patent document.

This plot allows the user to analyse and investigate which technical field a competitor is filing their patents in. In this analysis, the user can find out the number of patents in a respective field, or how the patent portfolio is divided in different technological areas. 

You may also switch class systems between CPC or IPC as well as change the level of depth in the classification hierarchy.

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It can be highly interesting to analyze inventors activity, not only can you trace key inventors in a company, you can also trace the persons movement from company to company and the technical fields they are working in. 

This plot gives the user an overview of the top inventors. The user may change the number of inventors to be presented on the plot by editing the number or using the slider. The x-axis represents the inventor, y-axis the number of patent families and z-axis the priority year.

On the settings, the user may change the 3D settings in order to change visualizations.

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It can be highly interesting to analyze inventors activity. Not only can you trace key inventors in a company, you can also trace the persons movement from company to company and the technical fields they are working in. 

The knowledge of the most important inventors and/or R&D teams gives the user possibilities for updating monitoring activities within IAMIP platform. In this way, it is possible to extract additional information of what these inventors, and respectively their companies, are doing. it is additionally possible to identify inventors that could be of interest for the user as an employee candidate.

This plot gives the user an overview of the top inventors. The user may change the number of inventors to be presented on the plot by editing the number or using the slider.

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Comparing different companies patent portfolios and trends of their filings over time is a great way to get an overview of the competitive landscape. Just comparing numbers, i.e amount of patents for a given company, does not say that much. To instead visualize this data gives you a whole new picture. 

The Filing Activity plot shows patent filings over time for the full data of the selected portfolio or a sub-set of data (i.e. whole data set/certain assignee/several assignees). The time domain (x-axis) is related to the priority year, i.e. the year of first filing. The filings over time give the user an insight to R&D focus/commitment of the specific company. For example, have they recently started to become active in this area, or have they been active for several years? Observed changes may require an additional analysis to interpret the reasons for the change. It also offers the possibility to forecast patenting trends.

This plot gives the user an overview of the number of patent families filed over time per assignee. The activity can be presented by type (patent, utility model), status (pending, alive, dead), tags, or applicants. The default value is number of patent families per year. The user can also change the range on the x-axis by using the slider.

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The first evidence of a new product or process may be a published patent application. A common way of getting further insight into competitor’s activity is to analyze their patent documents. But, as a typical analysis can contain a large number of documents, a manual process of analyzing this data set can be very time consuming and error-prone. To overcome these issues, the analysis feature has been developed specifically to help the user to execute the desired tasks in an automated and fast way.

The type of information that can be uncovered by patent analysis includes:  

• Identification of competitors (or collaborators)  
• Scope and direction of competitor R&D effort  
• Competitor country filing strategies  
• Evolution of a technological area  
• Identification of key inventors  
• Comparison between your patent portfolio and competitor patent portfolios 

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A prior art search is (beside the freedom to operate search) the most often conducted IP search. As the name suggests, the prior art search aims to clarify whether claims defining a new invention are novel from the perspective of prior art.  

It is often conducted if an invention will be tested on its novelty inventive step and industrial applicability. In order to obtain a patent, the invention (claims) needs to fulfil those criteria and must not be disclosed anywhere else beforehand. This question is addressed by a prior art search, which is usually performed in-house or by a patent lawyer. The patent examiner in the patent office will conduct a thorough search as well on the invention in order to give his opinion. The likelihood of a patent application to be viewed by the examiner will increase from a comprehensive prior art search before drafting the application. This will save a lot of money as filing, prosecuting, and maintaining patents is expensive. 

The prior art search also gives insights on how comprehensive the claims can be written. By nature, those should be as broad as possible without infringing on other rights. 

The prior art search (or in this case, validity search) can also be conducted to check if a pending or granted patent is valid. Since prior art searches can never be 100% accurate (see below), relevant prior art might have been overseen by the examiner during the examination process, leading to patent claims that were not new (or inventive) due to that overseen prior art during the application process. As a matter of fact, a common misunderstanding is the thought that a patent will give its owner the guarantee of immunity against infringing on other IP rights. Since this is not the case, prior art searches are often conducted by competitors in order to find non-valid patents or too broad of claims in patents which they wish to attack to ensure their own freedom to operate or commercial activities. 

How to perform a prior art search 

In contrast to the freedom to operate search, the prior art search can be narrowed down to the specific technical concept of interest. It is a specific search driven by the (potential) patent claims.  

• There is no restriction of the type of publication, hence the prior art must be explored in patent and non-patent publications such as newspaper, journal presentations, websites, etc. 
• There is no local restriction of the publication. Worldwide publications must always be taken into consideration 
• There is no restriction to the language of the publication 
• There is no time limit for prior art. Hence the search must not be restricted to the last 20-25 years (as is e.g. the case for an FTO search) 
• The search can never be 100% accurate as it is, by nature, not possible to explore all relevant publications / literature 
• Patent applications are published 18 months after filing, which leads to a risk that relevant prior art is overlooked asit is not yet published 
• There might be a lag in the search databases or relevant documents may not be searchable as they are not ocr published 

Prior art searches not only give information on the prior art and the patentability of the invention but also help to understand how broadly a new invention can be claimed. In general, comprehensive prior art searches also help us to better understand the market conditions and the important competitors in the field of technical interest. 

The prior art search should be performed by: 

• Brainstorming keywords that define the invention and searching for them in a patent database 
• Taking classification (such as CPC and IPC) into consideration 
• Expanding the search to non-patent databases and resources 
• Searching for patents of competitors in the same technical field 

Options if prior art is found 

If, during a search, prior art is found, the invention (claims) turns out to not be new (novel), 

• and no third-party rights are potentially infringed, the invention can be commercialized without having the possibility of filing a patent 
• and third-party rights are potentially infringed, a freedom to operate search should be conducted 
• the invention is potentially patentable 
• a freedom to operate search should be performed 

What does a prior art search cost?  

A prior art search can either be performed in-house (e.g. in the R&D department), or externally by a patent lawyer. It will typically cost between 500€ and 5000€ but strongly depends on the level of detail needed.  

The difference between prior art search and freedom to operate search 

The focus of a prior art search is to understand if a potential invention is new. A freedom to operate search tries to clarify whether a potential invention is infringing on other IP rights. 

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The freedom to operate search is, besides the prior art search, the most used patent search. Whenever a company is developing or planning to launch a new product there is always a risk that commercialization may be blocked by someone else who holds an IP right for any kind of technology incorporated within that product. The freedom to operate strategy usually consists of two parts: the search analysis itself and the clearance report (legal opinion). The analysis incorporates the real search, however the clearance report summarizes the results, often conducted and provided by patent attorneys. 

In the event of infringement, the owner of that IP right might (and possibly will) claim compensation and try to hinder the commercialization of the product. Those legal disputes are of high financial risk and might additionally frighten customers-and potential customers of the company. 

That is why companies should use phase gate models in their development process to constantly monitor and follow up on technical developments to secure their “freedom to operate” and to ensure that the commercial production and marketing of their product, process, or service does not infringe on any other already existing IP rights. 

Freedom to Operate Search 

A freedom to operate or infringement search begins by searching for issued or pending patents and thereafter analyzing the claimed scope of protection to get a legal opinion whether the product, process or service is potentially infringing on any patents owned by others.   

The search should be done comprehensively to avoid leaving out patents of interest. However, the search can be restricted to: 

• Technical area of interest e.g. by IPC or CPC classifications   
• IP rights that are in force or pending: Non- active IP rights can be neglected 
• The last 20-25 years (depending on the technology area): Patents usually have a term of protection for 20 years. The additional e.g. 1 year takes the priority period into account. 
• The countries of commercialization: If the product will only be sold in one country (e.g. Sweden), the search can be restricted to Swedish IP rights (patent, trademarks, designs,…) to European IP rights and to (worldwide) PCT applications. Other countries can be neglected as there is no risk of infringing IP rights from these countries. 

Due to the 18 months of time between application and publication date or e.g. potential errors in databases, the freedom to operate search can, by nature, never be 100 % accurate. Also, there is always a risk of overseeing important IP rights. 

Hence, there is never an absolute guarantee of a “freedom to operate”, but a comprehensive freedom to operate search will mitigate the risk and save both resources and money. 

Costs of a Freedom to Operate Search 

The FTO analysis can either be conducted in house (in the R&D department) or by a patent lawyer. The costs of an FTO analysis may vary a lot, as they are usually proportional to the number of reviewed documents. Typical FTO analysis might cost between 5.000€ to 20.000€. The effort (and cost) is always directly proportional to the required level of detail, which means that the economic value of the potential commercialization of the product should be known and well balanced with the costs of the FTO search. 

Options if a potential patent is blocking commercialization 

If the analysis finds patents that might block the development or commercialization of the product, there are multiple methods of action: 

• The blocking patent can be purchased or licensed  
• Cross-licensing agreements are also a common solution to be able to use certain patents owned by others 
• Finding a work around is another option to avoid infringing on patents  
• Performing an invalidation search in order to invalidate and get the patent revoked. There might be prior art describing the patented technology that was never found at the time of examination 

Options if no other patent of risk is found 

If a search does not find any patent blocking the way to the market, 

• It might be possible to patent the technology in order to ensure the freedom to operate and block other parties in the market 
• Publishing the technology, so called defensive publication, can also secure the right to act and, at the same time, prevent others from patenting the technology 
• Avoid publishing anything and start production and commercialization of the product. This is a valid (but risky) strategy as well. 

Difference between freedom-to-operate search and prior art search 

A prior art search will be conducted to determine whether an invention is new (novel) and incorporates an inventive step. The question of whether third party rights are potentially infringed is not addressed. Therefore prior art searches can be performed in a much narrower approach and have a different objective than freedom to operate searches. 

For more details see prior art search. 

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