Intellectual Property

The innovation lifecycle involves various stages of the innovation process, optimal conditions, and the appropriate time to utilize IP research and intelligence methods. This blog post highlights the process from a patent intelligence perspective and the professionals that are invaluable at every stage. Refer to the figure below to understand each stage of the product innovation lifecycle: Ideation This stage primarily involves generating new ideas which are then filtered based on a prior art search for patentability. Simply put, you need to ensure that the idea is novel, non-obvious and industrially applicable before proceeding to the next step, patent landscape analysis. For this evaluation, you must carry out a  patent landscape analysis  wherein you study the technology area such as its patent and assignee trends to gain insights on current technologies. Subsequently, you can conduct a  white space analysis  to validate promising technology areas with the ...

  If you need to record an enhancement to an invention that was featured in an earlier application, then you can choose to file a divisional patent application, a continuation-in-part (CIP) patent application or a continuation application. Patent of addition applications (present in New Zealand, Australia, and India) and divisional applications (available in China and Europe) bear similarities to CIP patent applications. However, in this blog post, we focus on highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of the CIP patent application available in the U.S. The CIP patent application features new innovations related to the original (parent) application and is filed after it. Previously filed claims in the CIP application have the priority date of the parent application and claims that disclose new subject matter have a different priority date. If your invention has other embodiments, then your best bet is to file a CIP application to protect it better, which also strengthens your ...