Patent Mining: Uncovering Potential Winners

Converting great products into powerful inventions can be one of your most daunting tasks. In the world of development, results are everything. This makes the act of stepping back and looking at what you've really got seem like sifting through slag for nuggets. But with a good mining program in place you can separate the winners from the losers and cash in on your IP.

But the "Patent Mining" process varies with the type of development work and product mix. For example, your group may have a mature product line that developers regard as lagging behind the competition and feel that patents would be a waste of time. However, with a new version just ready for distribution, this situation may benefit from a closer look.

Once you have a developed a good Patent Mining program, situations like this and many others can be addressed. It becomes a simple matter to mine patents from your development projects. By crafting a small Patent Mining effort to identify promising products, you can quickly shift your focus to areas having the most potential.

By developing the ability to take a discerning look at Work In Process for IP opportunities, it is also possible to more accurately estimate the potential Return-On-Investment of products in light of existing market competition.

This is because Patent Mining requires a close examination of products and services that others have developed. In effect, all the products that are included in what is commonly called your "release ladder" become eligible for Patent Mining, but always in light of what competitors have done. This process results in an organized grouping of product classes having the highest potential for innovation over a relatively long time period (generally more than 5 years) with a contrast verses the competition.

Another way to look at Patent Mining is "on the negative". It can identify functions that appear to be missing in competitors' products in light of your own contemplated product enhancements. This requires prior art searching, competitive analysis, and staff motivational incentives together with active development projects to achieve results.

NTP-IP Innovations has an extensive portfolio of Patent Mining Programs to apply to a variety of technologies, companies and business situations. These include areas like web services, communications, industrial control, and software applications. We will work with your staff and organize the ideas that they believe are valuable, search the market and patent world for similar work, and identify the best of them for opportunities.