Providing those with a need to know.

01

Applied Research and Development

It may seem obvious to initialize a patent portfolio through innovation. It's a common understanding that a patent portfolio is built on innovation. But have you considered how to leverage innovation to expand your patent portfolio from its initial stage? This is the journey we will embark on here.

Albeit, conceive patentable technology through innovation. That being said, how does one bring about innovation within the context of creating patentable technologies? It is by finding good problems to solve. Here, then, it is to say that creating seminal technology that would provide high value to a patent portfolio is brought about seeking, not "good" technology to patent, but seeking technical problems as a means to tease out innovation, where the technical realization of such foreground innovation is materialized through technology, thus bringing about seminal (i.e., precious) patent technology. Therefore, within a business setting, where is the most appropriate venue to tease out innovation from "interesting" problems? This venue should be R&D (i.e., the Research and Development department).

Ultimately, applied R&D will lead to the creation of seminal technology, which can be monetized through patent authorship rather than licensing and litigation. However, implementing this seminal technology may also lead to discovering additional problems that can be solved with patentable technologies. In other words, the issues resolved while creating a workable 'prototype' for the seminal technology may be patentable, and the value of these solutions is truly inspiring!

02

Claim Construction Development

However, two primary components of a given claim's structure provide the value of the patent application as a whole; the first property is scope, and the second is validity. Now, what are the differences between these two properties? The answer is that the value from which claims are derived is from the scope of the given claims; if the value of the patent is defined by the scope of the independent claims drafted under the given patent application, then why bother with dependent claims? The answer is that dependent claims are the patent application's "backup" if the United States Patent and Trade Office (i.e., the USPTO) evaluates the scope of a given claim as too broad and invalid to be a legitimate patent claim. Likewise, dependent claims protect the inventor from future patent litigation within a court of law framework.

Wherein, to preface, dependent claims are nested within an independent claim. Moreover, if the USPTO invalidates such an independent claim, this is not to say that the claim in and of itself is invalidated. In as much, when independent claims are invalid by the USPTO; the USPTO will then "substitute" the invalid independent claim and look at the preceding dependent claims that are nested within that independent claim's structure, which was initially invalidated. Wherefore, the dependent claim nested least within the given "invalidated" independent claim's structure is substituted into the space created within the given the claim's structure relative to the initial independent claim found to be invalid. Now, given the prior statement, how is the nesting of the dependent claims important to the "backing-up" of a claim's structure? To reiterate, invalidated independent claims will be substituted by its nested dependent claims.

03

Patent Portfolio Cultivation

The principles of developing a healthy patent portfolio requires deliberation even before the first patent application is sent to the United States Patent and Trade Office (i.e. the USPTO). Here then, it is to say that the development of a healthy patent portfolio requires strategic thinking.

As a means to detail the issue of strategic thinking in conjunction with that of patent portfolio development, this strategic approach is the intermingling of patent and corporate (e.g., company) strategy. Specifically, patent strategy development is different from corporate strategy; a given patent strategy supports a company's strategic goals and aims directly.

With this, nurturing a corporate strategy is beyond the scope of this newsletter. That being said, broadly, the universal principle corporate strategy is to occupy a strategic niche within the marketplace, where the given business conducts operations; the given company is motivated to gain from and defend such a market position. With this, the statement above is the ethos as to why patent portfolio development is paramount to overall success in achieving a given corporate strategy; to describe patent portfolio development and its underlying strategy (instead of the corporate strategy), it is primarily conducted within the company's Research and Development (i.e., R&D department). Here, one can see the organic intermingling of the patent strategy and the corporate strategy simply from where the production of patent technology is taking place; the R&D department is central to the given the company's relevance to the consumers' product preferences and market-desires.

Thus, the value of developing a healthy patent portfolio is that it leads to competitive advantage. Thus, monopolizing market share; finally paving the way for that company to realize their corporate goals and aims, underlying their corporate strategy by driving out competition instead of patent thicket deployment.