BELLINNOVO IP

Technology Landscaping

Optimize your IP strategy by understanding your technology ecosystem

Clients and prospective clients almost always ask, “Is our innovation patentable?” The better question is something like this: “Is the scope of patent coverage we might secure going to be worth the time and resources we’ll have to expend to get there?” This is a tricky business question, but the analysis usually starts with landscaping the technology space. Who’s active in the industry? Is commercial activity resulting in patent activity, and are those patent applications issuing as protectable rights, or are they getting shot down at the Patent & Trademark Office? You won’t know unless you look.

Identifying where the patents are *not* helps to direct R&D spend, allowing your company to focus on the technological areas that are more likely to be patentable than those in which a lot of competitors are already engaged in an ongoing turf war. If it seems that you’re in the clear, are there adjacent technologies that may come into play, and how aggressive are the patent owners over there? Again, you won’t know unless you look.

You might also ask, “What happens when we find some third party patent that we don’t like?” That, too, is a tricky business question, but there are a lot of ways to approach this situation, and BELLINNOVO has a lot of experience with most of them. The first step is understanding that, like a toothache, a scary patent won’t go away by your ignoring it.

Identifying where the patents *are* helps the company navigate around the most treacherous waters by nudging the development resources away from the most crowded spaces. Active risk management in this context is better than finding out about a competitor’s patent position when your registered agent accepts service on your behalf.