Knowing your competitors and the status of their activities as soon as possible are imperative to any company, in particular to R&D based companies. You are facing lots of important decisions on your own R&D activities and patent portfolios, all of which are also based on external factors including competitors.
We undertake competitor profiling assignments to provide to the client a mapping of relevant competitor activities, including R&D activities, commercial activities and patent activities.
Patent activities are a rich source of competitor intelligence as the public has access not only to the published patent applications but also to the patent prosecution activity. Patent applications broadly outlines the borders of your competitors important inventions, whereas the patent prosecution history via public file-inspection often reveals much more detailed info on what is the commercial core of the invention.
We also undertake specific surveillance assignments directed to either monitoring new patent applications or to monitor the progress of an already identified patent family or patent application. As most companies have excellent information centers we can also limit our service to assisting in the set-up and improvement of surveillance profiles.