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Patentability Reviews for Innovations

Patent professionals can do a better job providing patentability review, or "opinion," services for innovators. As most readers would recognize, a patentability review assesses whether the invention to be claimed will meet the legal requirements for patentability. In the US, this entails an assessment by a patent attorney, which can be based on a formal or informal search, whether the client’s invention is novel and non-obvious over the prior art. The rules by which a patent attorney makes a determination of patentability are well-established and would not be considered controversial by most experienced practitioners. Nonetheless, as an IP Strategist who works exclusively with clients engaged in developing and delivering meaningful innovations to consumers, I know that these entrenched patentability assessment practices deserve retooling for those clients who can be classified as "innovators." To this end, I believe that the way the patent

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Free and Low Cost Patent Search and Analysis Tools: Who Needs Expensive Name Brand Products?

(NOTE:  At the end of this post is a detailed spreadsheet that lists the free and low cost tools that I use regularly in my IP strategy practice.  At the request of a group of IP strategy professionals with whom I network, I will be giving a presentation on these tools at a local event.  I thought that readers of this blog would also appreciate learning about how these tools can add high value at a low to minimal cost.) no name brandIn private conversations, some of my corporate peers inform me that they pay $1000's per year (or even per quarter for larger companies) for access to "name brand" patent search tools that nonetheless  do not contain accurate and up to date information.  For example, a client tells me that one of these expensive tools fails to update USPTO records on

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Enhancing Innovation ROI by Adding Patents at the Front End: Some Resources

A new client has asked for some information on how consideration patents and IP at the front end of the innovation/product development process can enhance business value.  Readers of this blog might find this material informative, also. This is a published article from Innovation Management article entitled "How to Improve Innovation ROI with Early Stage Patent Expertise."  In this article, I discuss how IP can help orient innovation teams in a direction that can enhance value capture.  Practical steps to implement such a program into innovation processes is included in this article. Here is a YouTube video that explains my process simply.  In short, including IP at the front end of a company's innovation process allows one to enhance their calibration with respect to the IP rights of others to better ensure that they will achieve the desired ROI on

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How to Improve your Innovation ROI with Early Stage Patent Expertise: In Depth Management Article

This article, How to Improve your Innovation ROI with Early Stage Patent Expertise,  was published in late 2010 as a pay for download article in Innovation Management Magazine.  It later became free for download, and I can share it with readers in this link.  I hope those responsible for creating value from IP in their organizations can find the insights in this article helpful.  Here is a synopsis:

Innovation teams are often removed organizationally from a company’s patent matters. This can mean that corporate innovation processes move forward with little or no consideration of whether competitors can legally “knock off” the resulting consumer offering. Companies may then not attain expected ROI because competitors can legally copy the innovation—be it a product, technology or otherwise—without incurring legal liability. It may not always be necessary to protect innovation

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My Gift to You: Free (or almost free) Patent Searching and Analysis Tools

Happy Holidays everyone!  I woke up this morning to the Christmas sunrise over Miami Beach on Christmas morning.  Having grown up in this town--where Christmas means a trip to the beach, not the joy of new ice skates--I am feeling a whole lot of holiday spirit.  This made me realize that I have been meaning to respond to some inquiries folks have made about patent searching tools that I use in my daily IP Strategy work.   Since most of these are free (or almost) free, consider this your holiday gift from me! I hear it now:  "Free?  Did she say free?  But, such and such company wants to charge me $1500 a month, which is a much better deal than my lawyers charge me for monitoring patents in my business space on an ongoing basis.  And, this consultant offered to do a whitespace analysis that would solve all my innovation