Intellectual Property

In 2024, the skies are not just about flying higher—they're about flying smarter and greener. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is capturing imaginations and revolutionizing cityscapes with sleek electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles and passenger drones. These cutting-edge technologies promise to slash urban congestion and boost sustainability, making sky-high traffic a real possibility in the near future. But with more drones buzzing through our skies, the challenge of managing them safely and efficiently becomes paramount. Enter the world of sophisticated Drone Traffic Management (DTM) systems, designed to keep our skies safe. Yet, as patents pile up, they bring a maze of regulations and dense patent thickets, potentially stifling innovation. Fear not—forward-thinking companies are mastering these mazes with advanced patent research tools, ensuring their innovations soar without getting tangled in legal snarls. Curious to see how these advancements are reshaping your fut...

Understanding the nuances between design and utility patents is vital for any innovator or business aiming to safeguard their creations effectively. Here’s a streamlined guide to why appreciating these differences is not just important—it's essential: Design Patents: Your Shield for Style Protect the essence of your product’s style with a design patent. These patents cover everything from the curve of a lamp to the pattern on a textile, crucial for industries where style distinguishes your offering—think high fashion, sleek cars, or cutting-edge electronics. Not only are these patents processed quicker, but they also protect your designs for up to 15 years. Utility Patents: The Backbone of Innovation When it comes to the core functionality of your invention—be it a groundbreaking machine or a new chemical process—utility patents are your best defense. Essential for sectors driven by technological advances, such as manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, these patents provide up to 20 ye...

In the face of climate change, green patents are playing an increasingly vital role in driving environmental sustainability. These patents cover inventions that promote greener solutions—renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable technologies—ushering in a new era of eco-friendly innovation. The global push for sustainability is reflected in patent trends. Between 2006 and 2020, green patent applications surged by 120% under the International Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). Top sectors include renewable energy, waste management, energy storage, sustainable agriculture, and carbon capture technologies. Countries like the U.S., China, Japan, and key European nations are leading the charge in green tech patenting. Collaborations in research and patent pools are also rising, enhancing innovation through knowledge sharing. However, challenges remain, including high costs and patent thickets that could hinder access to critical technologies. With stricter climate policies driving ...

  Quick and accurate patent categorization is important because it enables you to comprehend the   IP landscape of an industry. Manual categorization is tedious and takes hours. Occasionally it’s not possible to do because of insufficient subject matter experts. IPC and CPC classes are wide-ranging and might not match your categories. With these considerations in mind, we created PatSeer’s AI Classifier to reduce the amount of classification that has to be done constantly for technologies that you’re keeping tabs on. Built over the latest AI & NLP stack, the underlying Classifier model has been customized with semantic rules in ReleSense™ to achieve greater precision over patent and scientific literature. The AI Classifier can automatically learn from your existing taxonomy and the records you have categorized against it to make predictions for newer, uncategorized records. It supports hierarchical taxonomies and saves you the time and effort of manually classifying new re...

  The saying "Excel or die" is the foundation of product-oriented businesses. Companies that don’t spend money on breakthrough research face the risk of becoming obsolete. Many companies start with a set of innovative ideas on the basis of which they build differentiating products and achieve their initial success. Maintaining a competitive edge, however, may not be as easy as simply relying on past success and innovating around it. Improvement patents such as substitution inventions (replacing a product or process that is more efficient for the same purpose) and addition inventions (adding a component that wasn’t part of a product or process) are beneficial in boosting a patent portfolio, but it still remains crucial to keep an eye out for promising technologies that can dramatically alter the industry you’re a part of. This is the reason why companies should conduct technology scouting regularly. Technology scouting: what is it? Technology scouting is the identification, a...

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 ...

A perovskite solar cell (PSC) typically includes a tin halide-based material or hybrid organic-inorganic lead that acts as the light-harvesting active layer. PSCs are energy efficient, inexpensive, magnetoresistant and lightweight. PSCs are considered a major breakthrough in clean energy because they offer superior performance as compared to silicon-based solar cells. We conducted a patent search in PatSeer to gain a general idea of what the top companies have been working on over the years. We ran a query using keywords associated with PSC technology and appropriate IPC and CPC classes. More than 5,200 patent families were identified in the result set, which was then analysed in more detail.    Analysing the overall filing trends of the top companies The Innovation Timeline Chart in PatSeer helps identify the number of patents filed by top assignees in the last 8 years. Research has picked up pace in these years as more multidisciplinary companies (LG, Panasonic and Fujif...