Totaro & Associates Launches Innovation Analysis Tools

HOUSTON, Sept. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Totaro & Associates, a Houston, TX based market research and innovation strategy consulting firm is launching IP Portfolio Analyzer™, an innovation analysis and data analytics tool that provides dashboards, charts and insights into technological advancements through a qualitative patent landscape analysis method.

The toolkit helps companies get a comprehensive picture on industry technology and innovation by looking at more than just market intelligence alone.  The benefits come from thinking differently about intellectual property rights (IPR) as a manifestation of R&D investments.  By combining these unique insights together with conventional market research, the question of why certain technologies are developed and will be commercially successful can be answered, as opposed to just predicting what the next big thing hopes to be.

An understanding of the market drivers behind the new technology introduction (NTI) programs which resulted in their competitors IP filings will help determine if those patent filings on a particular technology will be a new revolution in performance or simply a defensive / blocking idea they don't intend to bring to market.  By combining this patent landscape analysis with product evolution or year-over-year product and technology roadmaps, a company will be able to determine time-to-market for their own products or services and even visualize a gap in the supply chain of one of their customers or competitors.

The premise behind these new tools is to intelligently search and catalog the entire 'haystack' of patents, so that it never needs to be searched again for the handful of valuable 'needles.'

This new approach to qualitative patent landscape analysis compares claim breadth of the patents in each family in the landscape to industry usage of a product comprising that patented innovation.  The usage of that patented technology by others will result in an industry relevance assessment of Low to High, which represents the degree to which that technology has proliferated throughout the industry and the world, as well as the potential infringement risk to the non-owners.

Through a new approach to patent clustering, or the assignment of a component and technology keyword to each patent family, companies can use this as a lens to view their competitors R&D investments and qualitatively assess their technological maturity.  This goes well beyond conventional IP analysis tools to show a heatmap which incorporates the industry relevance assessment along with recent trends in technology development whose impact has may not have been felt yet commercially.

IP Portfolio Analyzer™ will provide users with the ability to know the countries where competitors have IPR that would force them to make a design change to their product or service before it launches at the push of a button.  This also enables insurance providers to quantify IPR infringement risk to underwrite a policy or mandate risk mitigation prior to project finance being provided.

Clustering will also enable users to uncover un-cited prior art that can limit or invalidate a key competitor patent, which helps to minimize potential risk of infringement.  Assertions from non-practicing entities or 'patent trolls' can be neutralized when patents with high industry impact which are held by companies who would be willing to sell or license can be acquired before anyone else gets their hands on them.

Companies can analyze their patent portfolio lifecycle costs to determine annualized future portfolio cost and whether or not certain patents are worth keeping.  Those which have a low industry impact score and were widely filed, but with little hope of assertion or defensive protection can hit the chopping block.

Qualitative patent portfolio assessment has been taken to a whole new level thanks to IP Portfolio Analyzer™ by Totaro & Associates.  More information is available at www.totaro-associates.com

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SOURCE Totaro & Associates