Feature


Patent landscape analysis


in six simple steps


With the IPI Confex event just around the corner, Rob Poolman takes a look at the subject of patent landscape reports


Generally taking one or two weeks to complete, a landscape report can cover hundreds or even thousands of patent families. They can be used to visualise and


discover existing whitespace in relevant areas, gain actionable competitive intelligence by understanding the current landscape, to predict where your market is heading and spot trends in areas of interest to aid investment. They are a critical step in deciding the


R+D, competitive or patent strategy for any company or institution – and, over the next couple of pages, we describe six simple steps to help you ensure an effective and comprehensive patent landscape analysis.


Define your goal It’s important to understand why you want to do a patent landscaping activity, and to define these goals in advance. Depending on your end goal, you may want to address


some or all of these key questions: l Is this a growing area of interest? l What are the fields of current interest? l Who are the key players? l Where are the key players filing their inventions?


l Who are the key opinion leaders in this field? and


18 Research Information February/March 2017


l What is the legal status of the families in this area? Once you have a clear goal defined, it is


time to start with some general research to help you understand the area and define an initial search strategy.


Obtain a broad overview Begin with some general research around the given subject matter. Basic online research using a few relevant keywords, or looking into companies known to be active in the area can uncover useful articles and background information to help prepare your initial search strategy. Having a clear understanding of the area you’re investigating is critical when analysing the final landscape and answering the key questions outlined above. Studying a selection of basic literature will unearth some high-level keywords, as well as identifying key players that are associated with the technology or subject area you’re landscaping.


Define your initial search strategy Now that you have a clear understanding of your area of choice, you can begin to devise an initial search strategy. Start by generating keywords used for the specific technology and build from there. Searching your basic keywords within the


title, abstract and claims of patents will help you to discover additional relevant keywords as well as active assignees and inventors. Furthermore, a statistical analysis of the IPC and CPC codes used to classify the initial answer set will identify relevant classification codes to add to your search strategy. Once you’ve developed an initial search


strategy, encompassing keywords, classification codes, assignees and inventors, search results should be more accurately focused on your subject matter of interest by several limitation steps. This process is difficult and needs to be checked at every stage, to ensure that relevant records are not being eliminated. Results can be narrowed down by limiting the geographical area, removing utility models and design patents, removing irrelevant patent families identified by acronyms used in multiple technology areas, and limiting by publication years. By this point you should have compiled a solid search strategy and be ready to progress to the next stage.


Run your initial search The appearance of your search string will vary depending on which patent database you’re using. However, it should g


“Having a clear understanding of the area you’re investigating is critical when analysing the final landscape”


@researchinfo | www.researchinformation.info


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