Essential to understanding your portfolio, is to understand changes in your portfolio over time. Beyond merely counting the size of your portfolio as patents are granted and expired, you also need to consider other accumulation and growth patterns: velocity, momentum, claim quality, claim scope, geographic coverage (international), patent duration, patent analytics and patent fences or thickets. Using our patent search tools, such analyses are easy to do. Let IPstreet.com help you today. The idea for IP Street originated with Lee, a co-founder of the US's top ranked firm for patent quality, Lee & Hayes (Spokane, Seattle, Austin, Portland, Taipei, and Beijing). Lee became engrossed in the notion of mining IP data to plot business strategy when he was hired by an investment bank to predict the likely outcomes of the landmark NTP v. Research In Motion case. In the time since, he and his firm have come to represent six of the 10 largest patent filers in the United States, and Lee has become a recognized evangelist on the rise of intellectual assets in the U.S., China, and beyond. Lee gathered his colleagues at Lee & Hayes, some IP experts and others business strategists, raised funds, and went to work assembling the technologies and talent behind IP Street today. Proper organization of a patent porfolio is essential to be prepared to properly navigate the IP landscape. One key issue is related to inventorship. Consider the Pfizer patent, patent # 5,760,06^, which is commonly known as the COX-2 inhibitor. Pfizer is currently in a $1B lawsuit because Searle, the original owner of the patent, failed to include a key inventor on the patent. Pfizer inherited this mess when they acquired Pharmacia, who had previously acquired Monsanto, who had previously acquired Searle. Ignorance is not a defensible excuse in patent litigation. |
