Competitor Monitoring
Our hyper-targeted Patent Monitoring services allow you to gain the knowledge you need to put your plans into motion. From keeping a watch on your competitors’ IP to monitoring a specific technical domain and even your own portfolio of patents and publications, we’ve got you covered.
Why monitor Competitors?
Provide timely updates about Competitors’ product developments
Regular updates of the competitors’ IP, help in predicting the competitor's strategy
Constant updates of IP for a particular technology, for being updated about new inventions/ entrants in the domain
Regular updates on infringing products & market activities
Why Us?
- Watching any new filings by competitors and segregating publications based on taxonomy and further in different geographies.
- Monitoring Applicant’s publications Globally or for a particular geography
- Covering patents belonging to collaborators, subsidiaries, assigned to companies of interest
- Extracting insights from monitoring activity to timely track developments in Competitors’ portfolios through patents and non-patent’ monitoring
- Expertise in setting up monitoring including Specialized searches based on Bio-sequence & chemical structures
- Covering market activities of the competitor including M&As, product launches, exhibition & conference activities
- Team of 500+ techno-legal experts covering technical areas including Life Sciences, Engineering and ICT
- Team can handle disclosures and reporting in 16+ languages
- Covering 100+ geographies in multiple technology areas covered via 10+ Specialized Databases
Who might need this service?
IP Counselors
R&D Managers
Attorney
Strategy makers
Case Studies
Client:
The client is one of the leaders in biotech therapeutics worldwide with major IP and market shares worldwide. Headquartered in the US, the company engages with innovators in medicine, immunology and pharmaceuticals etc. globally and is functional in engineering therapeutics for a range of medical conditions
Problem:
The client required a detailed study and timely monitoring of patent portfolios of their competitors to determine areas of opportunities and competition. The client was further interested in identifying lifespan of the competitors’ portfolio for specific technologies to design around in furtherance to their R&D strategy. Overall, the client wanted technical and legal monitoring regarding the portfolios of their interest to advance their business strategy
Solution:
Search Objective: To identify any patent references that affect the clearance of the Client’s product/technology in various jurisdictions. Further, to determine legal updates in the portfolios of relevant patents.
Searching Included: Preparing search strategy using various Term Sets and Classes to capture patents filed in last 20 years. Identifying major players in the domain and formulating searches to capture most relevant patents assigned to these players. Further updating searches to add relevant information determined during preliminary searches.
Analysis:
- Determining relevance criteria based on the client’s technology/product disclosed in the identified documents.
- Screening patents based on the relevance criteria and further categorizing shortlisted patents in various categories according to the criteria.
- Analyzing the most relevant patents (five members per patent family) by mapping them under a detailed taxonomy underlying key concepts of the client’s technology/product. Further identifying information from the relevant results and adding to the taxonomy.
- Preparing a report complete with analysis and bibliographic information highlighting legal status details of the patents and sharing the deliverable with the client. (Deliverable 1)
- Monitoring newly published patent families and new published members of the analyzed families. Sharing monthly legal status updates and quarterly technical updates with the client (Deliverables shared for span of 24 months)
Outcome:
Impact:
According to the search and analysis shared by Sagacious, the client was able to assess the competitors’ most recent technology, legal status and lifespan of the patent pool for deciding course of action for their business strategy. The client was able to identify possibilities of collaboration with few of the competitors and extend their business segment in diagnostics.
Project Duration:
Time for quarterly technical updates: 24-28 hours/update – involving 1 analyst and 1 project manager.
Time for monthly legal monitoring: 4 hours/update– involving 1 paralegal support and 1 project manager
Client:
A US based Multinational in the field of FMCG
Problem:
The client was in the process of releasing a product in the market, which could face tough hinderance from a competitor’s patent portfolio. The client was interested to “watch” the legal events related to the portfolio, so that they could launch their product without any possible infringement.
Solution:
Analysis:
- Sagacious developed an understanding of the client’s product and competitors’ portfolio.
- Sagacious further identified family members, including continuation applications and legal events (history, tentative future events, amendments, oppositions and upcoming fee etc.) for each patent family in the portfolio.
- To organize the identified information, Sagacious prepared a detailed tabular representation corresponding to each prosecution or legal update in the portfolio.
- Sagacious compiled a dossier of documents corresponding to each update amended claims, new legal events etc.).
- Based on the study of portfolio and the chain of legal events, Sagacious formulated a monthly “watch” of the portfolio.
- Monitored the portfolio every month for a span of more than a year, within which Canadian family members within a certain monitored family became legally inactive.
- Sagacious therefore provided the client a timely update, to be able to introduce their product in Canada, with minimal refinement in their product specification
Outcome:
The client was able to receive timely update, to be able to introduce their product in Canada, with minimal refinement in their product specifications.
FAQs
Patent watch is defined as the routine process carried out by businesses for monitoring published patent applications or patents that have been issued recently.
It is essential to watch patents regularly to monitor your competitors’ patents, a specific technological domain or even your own patent portfolio or publications.
Patents are monitored for change in legal status and events in the prosecution. Patents are monitored by reviewing the file wrappers/ transaction history from the corresponding official PTO websites.
Patent Watch costs somewhere between $900-$1000 for monitoring 10-12 applications for one year (monthly monitoring).
Companies and individual inventors must monitor their own as well as their competitors’ patents.