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Patent Office Shutdown?
Low Value Portfolios
What do Customers Want?
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 Newsletter - October 2013
 
 This newsletter is for the benefit of: our customers both current and past, our workers , board members and friends including those of you we haven't talked to recently. Please feel free to forward to others who might be interested in our activities.   

What Happens if the Patent Office Shuts Down?

 

 Recently the news has been full of stories of the current and impending shutdowns of the government.  So far the patent office has not been effected.  Even thought the shutdown is over for now, whether or not is reinstated at some future point is still in question. As the federal workers return to their jobs and their backlog we might ask ourselves this question.  What happens to the functions that the patent office provides if they are not there to provide it?  Here's a link to a news story on the potential effects of the shutdown on the USPTO.

 

The major effect can be expressed in one word -- Delay.  One of the principal functions of the USPTO is patent examination.  Once a patent has been published at about 18 months,  anytime thereafter the USPTO starts "office actions"  sending their opinion of the inventors application to his or her attorney.

 

Before they send even one letter they must search the prior art make their preliminary conclusions about the patents relevance and draft the office action to send to your patent attorney.  The patent office actually provides an estimator as to the time to the first office action on their website.  Here's  a link for you. to try out.

 

With the patent examiners are missing on furlough or if the staff of examiners is reduced,  what will happen is that these applications will pile up at whatever stage in the application process they are at.

 

Even without the shutdown, the patent office is already running with delays due to the overwhelming volume of applications it currently receives.

 

The cycle time for processing a patent application includes an 18 month latency period where what goes on at the USPTO is invisible to the outside world, followed by the patent prosecution phase of office action-response-office action.  I give a brief description of this process in a the following video.

What it Really Takes to Get a Patent
What it Really Takes to Get a Patent

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So be prepared to wait,  and if the government shuts down again be prepared to wait longer.   Remember that you can start enforcing your patent application once it publishes by warning people using your idea that a patent is on the way.  In the meantime be sure that you don't slow down the process yourself.  Also, the better written your application is the less time it is likely to spend in prosecution.

 

So, do your best, be patient and if you want help  please give us a call.  We've been there before.

 

 

To contact us,  just send an email to rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or  give us a call at  (585) 520-3539  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why many patent portfolios contain little of value 
Leverage of key patent on key technologies  ITTr Logo
 
Many companies and universities who generate a lot of intellectual property like to market that property in the form of portfolios of patents.  Usually those portfolios are organized around a given technological area but not always.  Patent portfolios may contain some patents of high potential value but they usually contain a lot of low value items as well.  
 
The sellers use the strategy of including a few jewels in with a lot of rocks to be able to get back some of the funds that they spent on the rocks.   
 
Also some portfolios include an
Omnibus systems patent together with several other patents that fill in the details of how the other components of the system work.   These "supporting cast" patents are usually of little value by themselves, but combined with the Omnibus master patent they can control the entire access to a new technology. In that case they form what is called a "patent thicket".
 
If an Omnibus patent is offered , its important to find out what the supporting patents might be, as some important ones may not be included in the portfolio that is for sale.  
 
A simple patent search focusing on the inventors and assignees of the patents in the portfolio may identify all the members of the family group which support the Omnibus.   Since owners may not make all of those patents available its important to find out if the portfolio has some big holes in it due to omitted patents not offered or worse sold to other parties such as competitors.
 
Another method of scoping out the value of a patent portfolio is a patent map.  Our sister company Business Metamorphosis is one of many companies which offer patent mapping services or software.  Click on the link to get an idea of what a patent map is all about.   A patent map can show where in the patent landscape a portfolio's patents lie and more importantly where they lie relative to those of competitors.
 
For example in one patent map we did for two potential merger partners one company had a far larger portfolio if you simply counted patents.  However a patent map revealed that many of those patents were simply extensions by the same inventor of a single core patent.  Thus their "footprint"  in patent space was far narrower than the other portfolio which encompassed a     wider region.  You can find this situation described if you click on the "patent map" link in the last paragraph.
 
Patent maps can also identify gaps in portfolios where other patents need to be written or competitors patents identified.   
 
If you want to know more about portfolios or would like to have a patent map constructed for your patents, just give us a call or email .
 
 Just  send an email to rblazey@ittrifecta.com  or  phone me at (585) 520-3539

 Your customers Are your business.  What do they want?  How do you find them?

Penguin Logo  

Getting customers  is the first responsibility of a business.  If a business has been going for some time it usually has a pretty good idea of who its customers are.  But when that business is a start-up or when an existing business launches a new product line the identification of the customers may not be nearly so clear.

 

It is at that point that a company needs to conduct market research to help it determine what kinds of customers it can best serve.   There are many tools to help  a company narrow down the landscape of possible buyers.  Among them are Hoovers and Infousa.

 
However these tools are just starting points.  They can tell you, for example,  how many cat owners there are in a given geographical area.  That doesn't mean however that they can tell you who might be interested in your new scratching post,  or  what features they would like to have in one.
 
For that purpose you need a more targeted calling process such as the Market Sonar that Penguin provides.   Once you have identified the rough outlines of your customer set using such tools as Hoovers and InfoUSA you can refine your definitions much more accurately with Voice of the Customer calling.  That process which we provide is where you ask real customers real questions and most importantly listen to what they have to say, not just which box they check on a questionnaire.
 
To learn more about Market Sonar visit the Rochester Penguin Group website or follow this link

  

 And if you would like to talk to us directly, please email me at rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or  call (585) 520-3539

 

 
We appreciate your responses to our newsletters.  Please send us your comments.  We are always interested in what you want to know.
 
Sincerely,
 

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC
Disclaimers 

 
Please realize that this newsletter contains only our opinions on patent matters.  We are not authorized to give legal advice.  If you are seeking such advice please contact an attorney.
 

 

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