Beyond the protection of innovations, the analysis of patent filings — or patent landscaping — has become a powerful strategic tool , revealing the major technological directions of your competitors, but also of potential partners, or even application markets. for an emerging technology.
Thus, understanding the patent landscape is not just a matter of legal certainty; it is a proactive approach to identify market and partnership opportunities , anticipate potential conflict areas and best protect your industrial and technological assets .
Discover in this article how to effectively map your patent environment and refine your protection strategy by choosing the most suitable vector (patent or industrial secret), while keeping a close eye on the developments of your competitors.
Patent landscape: an essential analysis for industrial property
What is the patent landscape?
The patent landscape is an in-depth analysis of the patent field that provides an overview of patenting activity in a given sector. This strategic approach allows companies to identify who is patenting what, where [1] and in what specific field.
By detecting trends , including the geographic evolution of filings and the technological areas targeted by competitors, companies can anticipate market movements and adjust their own Industrial Property (IP) strategy.
Why is patent landscaping important?
Patent landscaping is of capital importance for a multitude of reasons, well beyond its primary function of monitoring competitors.
Prevent the filing of similar patents
First, patent landscaping is essential to prevent the filing of patents that are too close to the company's strategic technologies . By systematically scanning patent databases globally, companies can detect recent filings that could encroach on their areas of innovation. This monitoring makes it possible to act upstream, either by contesting the validity of these patents on the basis of prior art , or by adapting filing strategies to avoid overlaps and strengthen the company's position in its key markets.
Understand competitor strategies
Analyzing and mapping the patents filed by competitors sheds light on their strategic orientations in terms of innovation and intellectual protection. This information makes it possible to identify not only the priority technological areas for competitors, but also their target markets , through the geographical analysis of the protections requested.
Regular monitoring also makes it possible to decipher these trends and detect changes in tactics. It allows you to adjust your own R&D and patent filing strategies, accelerate certain filings or, on the contrary, opt for another form of protection (Soleau envelope, Secret know-how file, etc.).
Crisis management: identify the threat very early and trigger pre-litigation actions
In crisis situations, where a patent application or a competing patent presents a risk to the development or marketing of one of your products or one of your innovations, patent landscaping becomes an essential monitoring tool to try to anticipate the competitor's request . This involves finding evidence of anticipation which calls into question the novelty or inventive step of the claims, in order to prevent the grant of a pending application , or to invalidate the patent or even to reduce it. its scope.
This approach requires a careful exploration of existing literature, including non-patent literature [2] , to demonstrate that the innovation is not as unique as claimed by the patent in question.
It is essential to take these steps as soon as possible and to act while the patent application or patent is still pending with a national or regional patent office. After this period, the appeals will be exclusively jurisdictional and infinitely longer, complex and expensive.
- Read also — Prior art search and patents: the guide
Identification of new areas of patentability
Furthermore, patent landscaping helps identify patentable areas not yet exploited, thus revealing new opportunities for innovation and protection . By analyzing gaps in the current patent landscape, companies can direct their R&D to less crowded and strategically promising areas, while securing strong legal protection for their innovations.
Defense of the value of its portfolio for a start-up
For a particular start-up (but in reality this case also applies to SMEs), patent landscaping helps to ensure that any patents on which the start-up's technology is based remain a real asset .
For an SME, observing that patents filed over time ultimately no longer have any strategic interest, because they are completely surrounded by a multitude of other patents... allows significant savings to be made and re-injected into other areas of the business. R&D.
A start-up will also have to provide proof to future investors of the strength of its patent portfolio and patent landscaping is a very powerful tool for this, very appreciated by investors , because it provides an objective and easy to verify photo.
Fight against counterfeiting
Finally, patent landscaping plays a major role in the fight against counterfeiting , helping companies monitor products and technologies developed by competitors or other market players.
This monitoring makes it possible to detect unauthorized uses of patented technologies, thus offering the possibility of taking action (which could go as far as legal action) to defend one's rights, negotiate a license with the infringer or, failing that, attempt to obtain compensation for the illegal exploitation of its innovations.
How can we create an effective patent landscape given the amount of information now available?
The limits of traditional approaches…
Classic patent landscaping methods consist of querying a patent database (Espacenet, Orbit, Gridlogics, etc.) using keywords or other search filters.
They face significant limits given the volume of patents to be reviewed. We therefore face five major challenges:
- The colossal and growing volume of patent data far exceeds the processing capacity of manual approaches, making comprehensive and regular analysis impossible.
- The diversity and complexity of data contained in patents requires analysis at several levels, which becomes more difficult with the increasing volume of data.
- Rapid developments in the information contained in patent databases make the patent landscape very quickly obsolete . New filings, extensions, legal statuses, etc. require permanent updating and continuous monitoring.
- Traditional methods often lack the flexibility to adapt to the specific needs of each company, thus limiting the relevance of the insights obtained for the innovation and intellectual protection strategy.
- Finally, effective interpretation and visualization of patent data , essential for quickly deciphering the competitive landscape and identifying strategic issues, is insufficient in traditional databases. They struggle to offer useful and efficient data visualization tools. And when they exist, they suffer from a “black box” effect with which users cannot be satisfied.
Failing to offer useful solutions, traditional methods result either in an under-use of this tool, or in a restrictive universes (keywords and other filters) , but which can leave weak signals unspoken. yet essential.
In response to these challenges, modern patent landscaping solutions integrate advanced technologies such as NLP and NLP (automatic language processing), but also machine learning (LM) and of course the now famous LLM’s .
They offer real possibilities for carrying out in-depth , personalized and up-to-date of the patent landscape. These tools not only overcome the limitations of traditional methods, but also provide businesses with the strategic insights needed to effectively navigate a competitive environment, thereby strengthening their market position through optimized management of their intellectual property strategy.
Patent landscaping in the age of cutting-edge technologies
Effective mapping of competitors' patent strategy requires a structured approach and the use of advanced technology monitoring tools , essential to guide strategic decisions regarding innovation.
This process takes place in five main steps:
- Comprehensive data collection , where a large quantity of patents is collected from global databases, facilitated by automation via specialized software (see those offered by TKM), which speeds up and helps refine the search. The choice of keywords and other search filters can be complex, but TKM's engineering teams are also there to help you and save precious time during this phase.
- Semantic and technological analysis , using trusted artificial intelligence, trained on your use case or your industrial universe, you will be able to process, sort and classify patents according to their content and your needs, and dispatch them to the right internal teams.
- Data visualization and mapping , where the analyzed data is presented in the form of various maps illustrating business areas, trends, emerging application technologies and markets, and competitor strategies.
- Continuous monitoring and evaluation , involving the dynamic implementation of these patent map interpretation tasks to anticipate the actions of competitors and regularly update the data for lively and responsive technological monitoring, coupled with the strategic decision process within the company. business.
- Integration into the innovation strategy , where the insights obtained directly influence R&D priorities, the filing of new patents and the commercialization strategy.
Automate your patent monitoring with TKM Software
Automating your patent monitoring with the tools developed and offered by TKM radically transforms the way in which your company can access and analyze patent information. This change is based on a unique mix of software and services that combines technical expertise in artificial intelligence , in-depth knowledge of given scientific fields , and skill in reading patent information , offering a complete and integrated solution for the management of intellectual property.
Scientific expertise and relevance of data models
Unlike traditional data providers, TKM enriches TKM Software with trusted technical expertise in AI and a team of high-level scientists to support you as a service when needed.
Our vision of AI is quite simple and pragmatic. A generic AI, that is to say trained to process patents in universes as varied as chemistry, pharmacy or aeronautics, will quickly reach levels of precision (ability of the AI to reproduce the behavior of experts) very low in view of the strategic issues of the day (30 to 40%).
This is all the more true since, from one company to another, and even within the same company, from one department to another, the question or task assigned to AI will be very different. How can a generic AI, with precision, answer questions as varied as those you can legitimately ask yourself when processing a monitoring flow?
Conversely, creating highly relevant machine learning algorithms can accurately identify and extract specific information from tens of thousands of patents.
The key to this effectiveness lies in specializing a generic AI model to your particular context. Are you faced with a use case that generic solutions cannot solve? Contact us, we’ll take care of it!
The distinctive advantages of TKM Software
- Speed and completeness: TKM Software (formerly IPMetrix) responds to monitoring requests quickly and exhaustively, processing thousands of patents to isolate those corresponding exactly to your desired criteria. This level of responsiveness and precision provides businesses with detailed analysis of trends and opportunities, eliminating the time and effort spent on manual data exploration.
- Data visualization and mapping tools: TKM Software 's advanced data visualization and mapping capabilities transform raw data into clear reports and intuitive visualizations . This allows users to quickly grasp their competitors' IP patterns and strategies, facilitating decision-making and strategic planning.
- Automatic data segmentation: thanks to machine learning, TKM Software automatically segments the data collected according to predefined themes, organizing the information in a way to simplify analysis and reveal actionable insights . This functionality allows companies to easily navigate through large volumes of information and detect the elements most relevant to their IP strategy.
Thanks to its software, TKM offers an adapted and personalized response to the challenges of intellectual property in the current competitive context. By placing your trust in us, you benefit from recognized expertise and cutting-edge technology to protect and promote your innovations. To learn more about how TKM Software can transform your IP strategy
[1] On the one hand, from which regions of the world do innovations come, but also in which areas do actors protect their inventions?
[2] Non -patent literature includes all public disclosures resulting in particular from scientific, technical, economic literature, published via any medium such as articles and publications in specialized journals or general press, conference reports, advertising communications, websites, blogs…
