Digital Equipment Corporation, once a leader in the computer market for decades, does not exist today. Why?
Because they failed to grasp the trends. Instead of continuing in the direction of progressive innovation, the then president of DEC, Mr. Ken Olsen, was skeptical of the success of the desktop computers market and went as far to say – “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home”, during a talk.
We all know what followed. Don’t we?
DEC is only an example, but there are many others. Eastman Kodak, Border Books, Blockbuster, the list goes on. One common denominator for their failure is that they did not align their businesses with technological progress.
It might make one ponder – How could it have been avoided?
This might sound unconventional, but patent counsels (IP Counsel; a term used interchangeably) could have helped avoid the failure of these businesses along with many others.
Many of you might wonder How patent counsels help organizations avoid failing. Isn’t their job limited to the prosecution, maintenance, and monetization of the patent portfolio?
Honestly, No.
Patent Counsels have multiple responsibilities in their job profile, and while prosecution, maintenance, and monetization form a significant part, an essential yet most overlooked of their KPIs is to help formulate the organization’s innovation strategy. Patent Counsels have the potential to run the innovation wheel of their organization at full speed. This very KPI could help organizations from failing. Let me explain how.
How Can Patent Counsels help set the direction of Innovation for an Organization?
With changing times, where every innovation needs to be protected to have a significant hold over a market, it has become paramount to have a patent strategy that is in sync with an organization’s business strategy. But more often, organizations (Read patent counsel) consider patents merely as an offensive or defensive tool and fail to leverage the futuristic insights that can set them ahead of the competition.
Patents, as we know them, are an index to the future. Analysis of patent filing data can tell a lot about technological trends. By identifying white spaces or innovative areas that resonate with the business areas of an organization, IP counsels can help frame innovation strategy such that an organization indulges in progressive innovation while continuing to expand its portfolio in the domain in which it already operates.
Patent filing data could be leveraged to find the next big thing, the technologies that would rule the future, and even give a glimpse of technologies that would cease shortly. If acted upon, these insights can help an organization formulate a proper R&D strategy, which could help R&D teams decide where to invest their resources, which can gain a high ROI for the organization.
How Can Patent Counsels Use Patent Data to Decide Where R&D Investment Should be Made?
Let us take an example to drive the point home. Consider the below chart comparing two communication protocol technologies in embedded systems and their growth in the past 15 years. In 2001, Bluetooth was the de-facto standard, and Zigbee was a minor player. But the tables turned in the next 5 years, and Zigbee’s growth outranked Bluetooth.
We know today’s situation where Zigbee leads the market of communication protocols for smart homes. Companies that acted on this insight and innovated pretty early reaped the fruit. One such company was Chipcon, a mixed-signal and wireless chip company, which introduced CC2430, the very first Zigbee System on a chip solution, which became highly successful. Chipcon was acquired by Texas Instruments five months after the launch of CC2430 for a whopping 200M. As a result of the acquisition, Texas Instruments is regarded as one of the top vendors in the home automation market.
Acting on the insights from patent filing data can significantly benefit an organization, helping it reach its zenith.
How Patent Counsels Can Communicate These Insights to Business Teams?
In a perfect world, IP counsels can communicate these insights to business teams, giving them precious clues about technological trends. Business teams would act accordingly to decide where R&D would occur, enabling progressive innovation.
But we don’t live in a perfect world.
It is often the case that the business teams are so engrossed in their R&D efforts that they don’t heed whatever IP counsels say. The claims of IP counsel frequently go unheard and result in a loss for the organization in the future.
How to make them listen to you?
The dominant question is – What can IP Counsel do so that the business teams do not just listen to their comments but also make business decisions accordingly?
The solution to the problem is not very complex.
It is often found that the insights submitted by the legal teams have a lot of legal jargon, which makes it difficult for business teams to leverage the data. When conveying an idea, supporting it with facts in an easy-to-understand format is always better.
For instance, consider that you work for a Multinational organization that manufactures solar cells.
You study market filing data of top competitors in the domain and analyze the number of patents they have in each country. An analysis would reveal that Germany has the least number of patents filed by competitors.
You realize that getting patents in Germany would prove to be of great value.
Now, all you have to do is communicate it to the business team so that everything is agreed upon to get started.
How would you present this to the business team?
You could either have this conversation-
Well, you lost the attention of the business team when G filed H patents in I land!
Or you can do it this way!
When presenting insights, facts presented with visual cues are much more effective. The key is effective communication and solid insights presented in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand format.
Consider the instance in which your company operates in the video games domain.
A look at the patent filing data of communication devices reveals that in the last few years, there has been an increase in the number of patents filed in the head-mounted display domain. Now, you can suggest the business teams invest in developing games that are HMD-compatible similarly.
This won’t just warm you up for the race in the future but also help you claim a niche spot among the top players.
If an organization’s legal and business teams collaborate, nothing can stop them from succeeding. Success lies in unity, after all.
Dear IP Counsel, identify those unexplored areas that will help your organization grow.
Do you want to know:
- What are your competitors working on behind the curtains?
- Which new products may hit the market in the next 1 to 2 years?
- What are the key issues most players in your industry are trying to solve?
- Where should you channel your efforts?
Patent Landscape Analysis can bring insights that seem distant and hard to reach at first within your hands.
Authored by: Anjali Chopra, Senior Business Analyst in collaboration with Mahesh Maan, Team Lead, Search Team
