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Dumpster Diving and Other IP Analysis Patterns

by Ryan Rozich on August 18, 2008

Software design patterns are generally reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems in software development. It is usually not a direct code snippet or solution, but rather a high level description of how to solve a problem that can be applied to many different solutions. One of the nicest things about software design patterns is that each pattern is named in a way that lets software designers share ideas using a common vocabulary. Software designers and programmers can discuss their use of a ‘decorator’ pattern or an ‘adapter’ pattern without having to dig in to the code level.

So what does any of this have to do with IP analytics? I have recently seen some presentations about named IP strategy patterns. At the LES spring meeting this year for instance there was a presentation on putting together an IP ‘playbook.’ They provided named ‘plays’ such as the ‘pied piper’ strategy for publishing your invention in trade journals after you file a patent application.

At Innography, we have seen many reusable ‘patterns’ of slicing through data for valuable insights. For instance, here is an IP analysis pattern that we have been referring to as ‘Dumpster Diving.’ If you were looking to acquire patents on the cheap you might examine recently abandoned (expired due to failure to pay maintenance) patents. You may catch a discarded patent in a resurrection window where the owner could bring the patent back to active status and reassign it to you. Since we know that it was not valued enough by them to pay annuities on the patent, you might be able to purchase that patent for pennies on the dollar of what it would cost you to acquire it from someone with a stronger negotiating position. This is an example of a re-usable ‘pattern’ for IP analysis.

As IP analysis tools become more mature and prevalent, I expect that we should be hearing more about these analysis patterns and best practices for getting useful business insight out of IP data.