These strategic patent services historically were performed by in-house counsel, and in particular patent attorneys who are employees of the company.

However, many technology companies are too small to employ a full-time in-house patent attorney, and so are unable to obtain these strategic services.

Even very large companies that do employ in-house patent attorneys often fail to receive proper strategic services based on decreased budgets or a lack of sophisticated tools.

Traditional techniques of obtaining patents create some level of protection, but will not provide tech companies with the insights needed to prevent the developed tech from being hijacked.  Sufficient patent protection and value can only be achieved after gleaning a comprehensive understanding of the patent rights and commercialization efforts of competitors and potential partners, and then using that understanding to create an intellectual property strategy and resultant patent portfolio that prevents competitors from hijacking the developed technology, proves differentiators, influences product development strategy, enhances business development, and facilitates other business goals.

Traditionally, patent applications are relatively short documents that cover a single inventive concept, which are created by a patent attorney merely placing an inventor’s expression into patent application format.  The ensuing patent rights are thereby siloed in separate applications, allowing competitors to design around each application, similarly to walking between trees to traverse a forest.

Very differently, AiPi has created a way to visually show the patent rights and commercialization efforts in an industry, and then overlay a tech company’s developed technologies over that visualization.  Analyses are then used to prove or disprove differentiators, and identify whitespaces of inventive concepts covering features or implementing technologies that will prove valuable.  These concepts can be related or unrelated to the currently envisioned commercialization efforts.  Massive patent applications are then filed that each cover dozens of these inventive concepts.  Each inventive concept is then claimed in a single subsequently filed patent application that obtains priority to the originally filed application, i.e., each subsequent application is viewed as being filed on the originally application’s filing date.  As competitors commercialize in the space, new patent applications that rely on the original disclosure can be filed to impede the competitors’ efforts and otherwise provide patent protection others will find valuable. 

This process allows AiPi to create strategic patent portfolios that not only prevent the developed technologies from being hijacked (such as by constituting an impenetrable mine field), but that also influence product development strategy, enhance business development, facilitate owner exits, increase company valuation, etc.  AiPi has a proven track record over 10 years of achieving these goals for our clients.