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, I you have an enhanced version nearly ready for distribution, this situation may benefit from a closer look.

Once you have 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 those areas with the best 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 the products and services that make your company excel. 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 separates you from your competitors.

This review process results in an organized grouping of product classes having the highest potential for innovation over a relatively long time (generally more than 5 years). Normally this is done by estimating their anticipated product life with your team.

Another way to look at Patent Mining is "on the negative". This technique identifies functions that appear to be missing in competitors' products while considering 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. Then we will search the market and patent world for similar work, and identify the best opportunities.