Strategic planning for intellectual property market research

In today’s rapidly growing IP market research and development, strategic planning methods are very effective in advancing a business or company’s insights and future goals. Competitive intelligence, primary research, secondary research, patent portfolio analysis and landscape preparation are the main key steps for IP domain related market research.

If a company has more patents and licensed technologies compared to other competitors in an emerging technology sector, that company’s chances of growing revenue will increase sharply.

To conduct effective IP market research, researchers need to follow a strategically planned path, as explained below.

1. Diagnosis of the issue or problem

– First make sure what kind of issue is going to be dealt with.

– Diagnose the issue or problem using data mining and extraction tools such as patent databases, non-patented literature search.

2. Analysis and Interpretation of the topic or problem

– Find some possible gaps or issues in the analysis of the patent portfolio.

– Carry out a landscape search related to the technological advancement of topics already extracted.

– Try to interpret these searches to find a single solution or future goal.

3. Prepare a work plan or policy

– Determine a workflow or a policy based on previously searched results.

– Have some necessary discussions with IP and business experts.

4. Optimization of the work plan or policy by selecting main objectives

– Add main objectives to the workflow or policy, so you can easily optimize your work plan with balanced future goals.

– Set the objectives in a well-defined way, according to their nature of operational mode.

5. Preparation for the initiation step or goal

– Start research using all the necessary tools such as patent landscape report, portfolio analysis report, competitive intelligence alerts, etc.

– Most of the time, the initiation step or objective should be broad in its form. For example, FTO search and patent landscaping search are mainly necessary in an intellectual property market research. Therefore, it will be easy for IP experts to make a confident decision on the next plan or step.

6. Estimation of costs and financial needs

– Profitability is a necessary objective for business success. It is a primary concern for all researchers, so they must take it into account.

– Compare the invention or technology in question with other similar products from competing companies or companies.

7. Establishment of the control and monitoring plan

– Develop a strategy to control and monitor the effectiveness of the entire plan during your working time.

– Finalize the drafted work plan or policy using the extracted results.

– To find a meaningful result or solution, merge all results from various analyzes and interpretations, such as novelty search, patent validation/invalidation search, freedom to operate search, landscape analysis, report of patent portfolio, etc.