The conception of an idea is largely an open-ended process where technology developers modify ideas based on their ideal conceptualization. But advancing a technology through all stages of the innovation lifecycle means dealing with real-world constraints. Novelty, future patentability, the competitiveness of a market landscape, and infringement risk all create limitations on what an idea can be and whether or not it is economically viable.
Generating a cohesive picture of these constraints to make an idea fit your company’s needs used to rely on the rare talents of your best innovators. Now, next-generation innovation requires a wide range of tools to properly assess which ideas to develop. IP.com’s innovation suite combines the best of AI and human skills to ensure the ideas you choose are those with the best chance to earn patent protection and generate revenue.
With advanced statistical modeling, data mining, and NLP, IP teams are able to operate with shared data and assumptions to move technologies forward reliably, systematically, and rapidly, working with constraints instead of against them.
Idea Novelty
A key aspect of patentability and eventual commercial potential is novelty. But what makes an idea novel? Assessing the novelty of an idea involves a concrete analysis of its potential to stand out technologically and commercially. It once took weeks or even months to compare ideas to existing publications, patents, products, and internal invention disclosures to gain commercialization perspectives, overwhelming even the largest and most resourceful companies.
IP.com’s AI-powered analytics condense this time-consuming and costly workflow while providing reliable novelty analysis with the Technology Vitality Reports (TVR). The TVR instantly provides objective insight into the uniqueness and feasibility of an idea. With proprietary AI and machine learning techniques, IP.com’s scoring system compares your idea with others across multiple IP landscapes, for functional assessment of how yours differs across the conceptual and technical dimensions that matter most. Add context to the single novelty scoring metric provided by a TVR using patent data that captures patent trends to provide a forward-looking novelty assessment.
Infringement Risk
Novelty is just one factor to indicate future patentability and competitiveness to support the idea prioritization process. It is necessary for IP teams to identify what sort of protections an idea will qualify for while also evaluating its commercial viability. Freedom to operate (FTO) searches lay the foundation for assessing both patentability and the ability to deploy technology in the marketplace while limiting infringement risks.
Assessing FTO is challenging because competitive environments aren’t static. As a result, invention descriptions must be precise and well-written to accurately assess idea novelty and determine FTO in a wide range of marketplaces. FTO searches are not only a key step in the idea validation process but can inform whether or not an idea should be pushed forward or requires additional iterations and a revised description.
Outsourcing with IP.com’s FTO search simplifies infringement risk assessment workflows by searching a broad range of technical landscapes to uncover in-force, pending, and expired patents. Our expertise can reliably decipher patent descriptions to distinguish how both dependent and independent claims could impact an idea’s potential for prioritization. IP.com FTO searches also include our Prior Art Database to go beyond patents to search defensive publications that can also constrain commercialization potential.
Landscape Analysis
Establishing idea novelty and FTO are essential to prioritizing ideas. However, a landscape analysis will also be required. Landscape analysis is vital to prioritizing ideas because it is a comprehensive look at a marketplace and integral to assessing the technological, commercial, and legal aspects of competitive technologies. Commercializing and marketing an idea involves understanding who your customers and competitors are and finding unmet needs with a white space analysis.
Professional patent landscape analysis brings the most relevant data points to the surface where the legal, executive and technical teams can assess the picture holistically. Landscape analysis also lays the groundwork for your go-to-market model by finding potential M&A and licensing targets, helping direct resources within your entire technology portfolio.