Innovators – For companies whose business is driven by innovation and in-house R&D, you will require regular patent research at different stages of your product lifecycle.

In the Pre-development phase, identifying existing innovations to avoid duplication of research is essential in a technology you plan on working. It would help identify gaps and give direction to your research. It will shed light on competitors and their activities, licensing opportunities, mergers, and collaboration.

The same is also true for a start-up with limited resources to invest in Intellectual property rights. As a start-up, you need to figure out if the idea you are developing is original, or incremental improvement or using a technology that might not yet be in the public domain. If you disregard this, you may not even know you have a problem before the launch of your product. Check for freedom to operate early on. Doing a patent search at the initial stage will help you decide whether to patent the idea, work around existing patents, take required licences, wait for the patent expiry, or docket the pending patent applications for regular legal status updates.

Once your research activity is narrowed down and the invention developed, conducting a patentability search can help you determine the novelty and inventiveness of the invention. It is to ascertain whether to pursue patent protection and what issues might arise during patent prosecution.

Throughout your product development and commercialisation lifecycle, you also need to have a competitive patent monitoring strategy to closely follow competitor’s tactics and predict their future moves. It enables you to plan your strategy, improve your product and services, assess new threats like new competitors or mergers and acquisitions of the competitors, and potential infringement.

Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your patent portfolio is essential for any innovator company to stay ahead of the competition. Are you filing in proper countries? Are you spending unnecessarily on patents that might not be relevant from the point of view of technology or company goals? These questions can be answered easily by the analytics capabilities of a patent database.