Patent Portfolio Management Ahmedabad

Patents can provide many benefits. The principle benefit is the competitive advantage in the marketplace from prohibiting competitors from making, using or selling an invention. Competitive advantage also may derive from leveraging patents for license revenue or obtaining rights in other technologies that may combine with home technologies for a cumulatively superior technology. Patents can shield against litigation and burnish a company's image as an innovator or industry leader.


Accordingly, every research and development-oriented business should develop a strategy that addresses: patent development and procurement; patent enforcement; and patent valuation.

1. Patent Development/Procurement

A valuable patent portfolio is more likely when businesses actively promote and pursue patenting. An important and common technique to do this is through creating a "patent culture." Creating a patent culture happens through educating employees about patents and their importance to their competitiveness and ultimately their livelihood. An invention disclosure program that encourages employees to submit written descriptions of possible inventions and rewards employees for their inventiveness.

A business should be careful to focus patent development and procurement on primary business or technology areas in which the company is or wants to be active, but not at the expense of complementary business or technology areas that would aid in attaining business goals. Ideally the business should establish a committee of business and technical personnel familiar with present and proposed products, customer desires, competitors and industry trends.

2. Patent Enforcement

Patent infringement is serious business that should not be asserted or attempted without careful consideration. Therefore, businesses should always keep abreast of what competitors are doing in view of the business' enforceable patents and prepare contingency plans based on trends and reasonable assumptions. This allows for attending to matters before they get out of hand through early engagement with alleged infringers. Portfolio monitoring also aids in leveraging its patent portfolio as a revenue source, or benefit by keeping competitors out of the market.

Historically, patent owners notified allegedly infringing competitors prior to actually filing suit. Nowadays, infringement defendants typically respond to such notices by filing a declaratory judgment suit, thereby denying the patent owner of a potentially more favorable litigation venue. Therefore, with the advice of patent counsel, the common practice is to send to the alleged infringer a courtesy copy of complaint after it is filed regardless of whether the goal is to reach an amicable resolution.

3. Patent Valuation

The value of a business' intellectual property, in particular its patents, continues to grow in importance, yet remains as challenging as ever to assess. However, bearing in mind some of the factors typically considered in valuation lends guidance as to prudent practices respecting intellectual property exploitation.

The most obvious and quantifiable factor is licensing revenue.

Regardless of whether any patents are licensed, another factor is the extent that the business' patents cover or are related to the business' products. A percentage of profits generated by those products are attributable to covering patents because they presumably deter competitors from producing that product or provide a cost advantage over competitor products.

Less quantifiable factors include the "design around" cost and the value of patents as defensive or marketing tools, which depend on how broadly the patents cover a technology. Since a patent is supposed to claim only one invention, the greater the number of patents respecting a technology necessarily increases the market barrier to competitors, hence the profitability of the products covered.

Businesses with large intellectual property portfolios also may be less susceptible to infringement suits because of the high potential for counterclaims based on any of a number of patents in the portfolio. Accordingly, rather than litigation, competitors may be more apt to seek cross-licensing or other joint development arrangements with joint profiting.

Softqube Technologies has developed an Innovative software Named IDES which provides an excellent Patent Portfolio Management
Services.