Savvy business and patent managers know that patent and technology landscapes can provide unique insights to investment priorities, planning and research areas, partnership opportunities, time to market, trending or disruptive technologies, and much more.
While there is a growing trend to move toward fully automated patent landscapes, these tools have lower accuracy (generally less than 80%) and are insufficient for high-stakes decisions. In a previous blog post, we shared more about when to use automated patent landscape tools. For high-stakes decisions, patent and business managers need the confidence of highly accurate data curated by analysts. This requires a combination of human expertise and advanced technologies for an instant and high-quality view of your project’s IP and R&D data.
Navigating patent landscapes requires some forethought and strategy. Previously, we shared how business and product managers can map the patent landscape process for business success. Knowing how to select the right patent landscape tool is an important part of this process.
As IP and business managers are seeing the power of patent and technology landscapes for their businesses, they are using these tools in increasingly advanced ways. To keep pace with their business and market needs, they are asking for features that go beyond the old-fashioned “vanilla” landscapes of the past.
In our work with IP and Research and Development teams and business managers, we often hear and consider what features make their jobs easier. Currently, the top five requests for patent landscapes include:
1. Action-oriented layout
Having beautiful charts and data is useless unless the data is used. Patent and Business managers need to be able to immediately see actionable insights in their patent landscapes.
2. Understanding the “What and Who?” in a glance
Patent and business managers do not have time to weed through data and complex charts. They need to understand the key technologies and top innovators in the domain in a single glance.
Explorer Function for key insights
Figure 1 shows Insightloupe’s new Explorer function, displaying key insights about innovations in the Meat Alternative domain as an example.
3. Visuals that provide the option to dig deeper
The vast amount of data in a patent landscape can be overwhelming. Patent and business managers need charts and visuals that show the most prominent findings, but they also need the option to gain visibility into the data to open the full landscape in one screen to explore the white space, examine the long tail and go back to the summary.
Visuals with granular data and full landscape views
Figure 2 shows charts for the meat alternative example, displaying both the granular data and full landscape on one screen.
4. Interactive reports that work and look great in PowerPoint
For most IP and R&D managers, PowerPoint presentations are critical for delivering important insights to their teams. They need interactive charts that link to their indexed project data to reveal details with a single click. If they want to include personal or confidential slides, they need the ability to download the report to a PowerPoint version with the option to click straight from a PPTX to the online version.
Landscape Reports in PowerPoint
In Figure 3, we see how easy it can be to download the full patent landscape report to a PowerPoint version with the option to export as a PPTX.
5. The ability to benchmark patent portfolios
IP and R&D managers often need to compare the strength of different patent portfolios by applying weighted scores on bibliographic fields of their project’s documents. This allows them to simply adjust the weights to understand the impact on different scenarios.
Benchmarking Features
Figure 4 shows how Insightloupe’s “Scorecards” feature allows users to easily compare the strengths of different patent portfolios. The mix panel levers enable users to adjust the indicators and see the impact immediately.
A current customer had this advice: “We have expanded our use of Insightloupe to include our in-house experts. Now our R&D engineers and patent attorneys are using Insightloupe to stay current on the ongoing flow of patents and research literature that they must review, assess, and tag. Insightloupe keeps track of this complex workflow, allowing our IP and R&D experts to stay focused on their domains without overlooking relevant patents”.
What features would you want from a patent landscape? We’d love to hear from you!
Schedule your demo now to understand how Insightloupe’s latest features and our mind+machine™ approach can help drive your company’s business success.
