Landscape Analysis: Overview of Technology Trends.

Patents are recognized as a valuable source of information due to the disclosure of technical and scientific information in them. An essential purpose of the patent system is to deliver information to the public. The patent system allows legal and technological information to be delivered to the populace. Legal information include  publishing details of patented material , the legal scope, publication countries, assignees, and when it passes into the public domain. Technological information, such as a patent’s so-called ‘teaching’ or technical disclosure, which is required to give a skilled reader all the information needed to put the new technology into practical effect.

According to World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) 3.3 million patent applications were filed in 2018 globally. The information available in patents may be not available anywhere else. This overwhelming amount of information can only be useful if the critical and relevant references of a technical domain are analyzed and then utilized in actionable decision making.  Patents can provide an unique prospective to the business venturing into new markets, corporations struggling for finding a solution to their problems, universities, governments and research institutions around the world. Research firms and corporations constantly hunt for the new and innovative ideas and to convert these into unique products that can be protected from competition by patents or other intellectual property rights such as design or copyright.

In order to convert ideas into unique products, businesses require sound knowledge of the market trends and competitors activity in the relevant field of technology. Study and analysis of patent literature offers a decent understanding of the current technological and competitive environment of any technology domain. This is possible through patent landscaping.

In other words, a patent landscape uses a large set of patents to extract relevant information useful for understanding a particular field.

What is Patent Landscape Analysis?

The term “Landscape” defines all visible features of an area of land. Likewise “Patent Landscape” is a process to create an overview of patents and patent applications existing in a particular area.

Patent landscape analysis sometimes also referred as patent mapping. It is a multistep process which involves utilizing human intelligence and computer software, to analyze, organize and extract value from vast set of patents. These analyses are helpful towards large businesses, universities, start-ups and research organizations to understand the current and future trends in a particular technology and explore rewarding product development opportunities.

The WIPO defines the findings from a patent Landscape Analysis as: “Patent landscape reports (PLRs) provide a snapshot of the patent situation of a specific technology, either within a given country or region, or globally. They can inform policy discussions, strategic research planning or technology transfer. They may also be used to analyze the validity of patents based on data about their legal status”.

A landscape analysis gives a competitive analysis of the past, present and future trends in the concerned technological domain which helps one to plan and execute innovative research strategy. A completed patent landscape analysis project consists of a set of technical references and accompanying analytics from which important legal, business, and technology information can be extracted. This information enables large corporations, startups, universities, research institutions, and investors to understand and make informed decisions prior to investing time and money into new technology and product development opportunities. Evidently, it is a market survey that can denote what technology already exists and then how to build on it.

 Need for Patent Landscape Analysis: Why a Patent Landscape Analysis is conducted?

The fundamental idea of patent landscape analysis is to review and organize the patent activity in a technology area that can reveal business, scientific and technological trends. Furthermore, a clear purpose of the analysis is essential and beneficial for implementing the insight from the patent landscape report. A Patent Landscape analysis can be done to comprehend one or more of the following:

• To develop a new product in a particular domain;
• To help organizations evolve and build their business strategies or plans;
• To help organizations identify their competitors;
• To identify patenting activity in a particular technology domain;
• To evaluate risk and identify areas for future growth;
• To understand the evolution of a technology field;
• To find the geographical distribution of patents filed specific to domain or specific to a player;
• To find the top Assignees or key players within in a technology and their technological tends;
• To identify the white spaces in a particular domain;
• To find the filing/publication trend of patents.

Types of Patent Landscape Analysis:

The typical Patent Landscape Analysis or Patent Mapping is customized to the client’s needs thus the search approach and end results may differ according to client’s requirements. Essentially patent landscapes can be broadly classified into following two types or a combination thereof:

• Domain Focused – Patent Landscapes Analysis

In this landscape analysis patents focused on a particular technical domain are extracted and analyzed. These landscapes are used to understand a particular domain better by using patent literature and derive the various insights based on the patent cluster extracted. These searches are used essentially by R&D and product development teams. Generally, this analysis provides insights into the technology trends, product evolution, patent filing trends (timeline), identification of potential whitespaces and gaps in the domain, key assignees and inventors, finding competitors and allies, and geographical filing trends.

• Player Focused – Patent Landscapes Analysis

If the patent search is focused on patents filed by one or more players (patent filers such as companies, colleges, research units, and Government funded organizations) ,it can be termed as a player focused landscape analysis. These landscapes focus on what types of patent filings are done by particular player(s). It is equivalent to IP profiling of the players to closely monitor their research and business interests by looking at their patent portfolio.

This analysis is also synonymous with competitive landscape analysis in which competitors are identified. This analysis entails a detailed investigation into the competitor’s product development, marketing, sales, and other vital operations. The analysis allows you to develop counter-strategies based on accurate and reliable data instead of guessing why you are underperforming.  A competitive analysis usually focuses on the:

• Identification of competitors
• The products and services offered by competitors
• Their strengths and weaknesses
• The strategies your competitors are using to achieve their objectives
• The overall market outlook

The player focused landscape is also carried out during M&A (Mergers and Acquisition) project where a company’s patent portfolio is used to calculate its value in terms of intangible assets and its worth to the businesses product and process portfolio.

Significance of Patent Landscape Analysis in:

• Understanding the Patent Filing Trends: Patent filing trends enable the organizations to understand the amount of change in activity in each technology, product, or application area over time. This is useful to understand how much growth has occurred in that particular technology, and be predictive about when activity might start to level off. The geological filing trends, i.e. the countries preferred by key assignees to file patents in that particular domain are also disclosed. The pattern or trend in patent filling enables marketing, competitive intelligence, commercial strategy, and human resource teams to gain an early insight to what technologies the competitors have in pipe line.
• Identification of Competitors and Allies:

A patent landscape analysis focused on key players who are operating within a defined technology space can reveal competitors and potential allies as well. Top assignees and prolific inventors are disclosed as well. The competitive patent analysis report can describe the patenting activity of the competitors across the globe, their product and services, and their strengths and weakness.

• Understanding the “state of the art” and its evolution

Patent landscape analysis offers a snapshot of the innovation happening in a particular technological field at any given time, but it can also convey the evolution of the subject technology. For instance, who are the pioneers, who is most involved and where innovation is taking place. These insights help the research department to learn important aspects of subject technology and allow them to potentially build, develop or even modify ‘State-of-the-Art’.

• Finding the Merger/acquisition and Licensing Opportunities:

Patent Landscape reports provide corporates and business developers the knowledge about major technologies in the market pertaining to a business and its owners. The analytical tools employed in patent landscape can determine the strength of patent portfolios of key players in the concerned technology domain. This is suitable to policy makers for considering potential merger/acquisition partners and licensing opportunities with competitors and to assess whether it makes more financial sense to develop the technology in-house or to look for it externally.

• Patent Infringement: Infringement of patent take place when one makes, sells, offers to sale, import patented product or a product made from a patented process without permission of a patent holder. Patent landscape analysis reports might reveal a few patents or patent application (not been granted), that are very close to your invention. This will grant you a chance to take defensive actions against any potential patent infringement. Additionally, patent landscape reports are used to track and prevent any possible broad patent claim language to prevent any patent allocation that is not novel and is similar to already granted patents.
• Identifying White space/gap in technology: Landscape analysis reports can reveals areas where there is little to no patenting activity. These gaps are termed as “white space” which could be patented and expanded. These are gaps in patents regarding a particular product or technology area that can drive the development of new inventions.