Case Study: What’s Mine is Mine (Intellectual Property Consultants)
The Problem
The IP management team at a major manufacturing company was tasked with discovering any other companies that were infringing on their portfolio of product patents. The team was typically alerted to patent infringement issues by their colleagues in product management, and were well-equipped to pursue such cases, but had never attempted to discover such intellectual property theft themselves. A cursory inspection of the patent portfolio suggested to the team that various companies and technologies were potentially infringing the portfolio, but with over 300 patents to screen and little actual industry or technical knowledge, they did not know how to proceed. Without the right professionals within their network who could deliver this unique evaluation, the team risked losing millions of dollars in unrealized licensing opportunities and widespread patent violation.
Critical Issues
Deep Technical/Business Knowledge Intellectual Property Strategy Limited Industry Expertise
The Solution
Maven quickly launched an Electronic Survey to obtain perspectives from individuals who had deep technical and business knowledge of the industry. The responses helped the team to identify companies and technologies that could potentially be infringing. The team then took this information and created a list of 200 patents from within this portfolio where the Electronic Survey responses suggested there was high likelihood of infringement. The team then identified two survey respondents who they wished to task with the review of each of these patents to identify specific infringement situations. The two respondents then performed the review and each identified 10 patents with infringement situations worth pursuing. This information enabled the team to explore attractive licensing opportunities which resulted in millions of dollars worth of licensing deals.
“We were unable to find people on our end with the combined deep technical and business knowledge on this topic. We turned to Maven expecting them to have the same results, but they were able to deliver two quality people who have met our exact requirements.” – Director of IP Management, Corporate Ventures
