A company may want to know how easy it is to work around patents they currently own or are about to purchase. For example, your intellectual property may be for sale or you may want to purchase intellectual property or enter into a licensing arrangement with a third party.
Intellectual Property Audits and "Mock Hostile" IP Audits
Your competitors are going to look for weakness in your intellectual property.
If your patents and your patent strategy can be circumvented you should be aware of this so that you can take defensive action to strengthen your IP position.
A non-standard but extremely valuable intellectual property due diligence initiative is to conduct a mock-hostile-audit or a patent-circumvention-audit for your company’s patent-protected products.
The objective of the mock-hostile audit is to identify strategies that a competitor could use to legally replicate your technology or your products.
Technology Outcomes Australian patent experts will find ways that your competitors could circumnavigate your intellectual property in order for you to then fill in those gaps in your IP package where possible.
Such an audit involves close collaboration between technologists and marketing personnel within your organisation and patent professionals.
When Is A Mock-Hostile Audit Or A Patent Circumvention Audit Useful?
Patents around the world are lodged and accepted frequently. However, the claims within those patents are often reduced in scope as a result of interaction with the patent examiner leaving many potential gaps for IP circumvention. This will either apply to your own IP or to your competitor’s patents and intellectual property.
Mock-hostile audits or patent-circumvention audits are highly useful in two specific scenarios:
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Scenario 1 - Can competitors circumvent your patents?
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Scenario 2 - You wish to circumvent a competitor's patent
A company wants to know if there are affordable methods to work around a competitor’s technology. eg. Your competitor has a commercially successful product in a market you would like to enter and you would like to know how to circumvent their patents.
Example Of A Mock-Hostile Circumvention Audit
An Australian company wanted to license a patent from a multinational company to enable the production of a medicated granule to control worms in pets and livestock.
The major international market for the product was for dogs and cats, however the Australian company wanted to use the technology for feedlot cattle.
The patent circumvention audit discovered that the Australian patent owned by the multinational company was modified several times during the Australian patent examination process, and the main claim of the final granted Australian patent required the inclusion of meat flavouring in the granule.
A viable circumvention strategy (for the cattle market but not the dog/cat market) was to develop medicated cattle granules without the meat flavouring.
Mock-hostile intellectual property audits or patent-circumvention audits are performed by Technology Outcomes as a non-standard patent professionalsIP due diligence services.
Technology Outcomes' Core Expertise
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Intellectual Property Auditing
Even if a patent is registered and paid for, there is no guarantee that its contents are fit for your company’s market-entry purposes. Depending on the scenario a patent that looks to have secure claims may in face be easy to circumvent.
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IP Due Dilligence
IP due diligence in regards to patents is the process of examining the quality of a company’s patent or patent portfolio (this process can be extremely useful prior to buying a technology company or buying a license from a technology company). IP due diligence is also highly useful when planning to partner with a technology company.
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Understanding How Patent Examiners Think
We understand the patent examination process and how patent examiners think. Instead of trying to push through patents that have no chance of being granted we will change the patent narrative to align with the patent examiners mindset. This leads to a greater over all rate of success in obtaining hard to get patents.
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Increase patent attorney efficiency
Allowing Technology Outcomes to tailor your intellectual property package in co-operation with a patent attorney will reduce the overall costs of patent procurement for hard to get patents. Technology Outcomes has the capacity to (1) translate your in-house reports to valuable patent text and (2) develop a low-cost experimental program to dramatise the novelty of your patent.
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High level expertise in both technology development and IP procurement
Technology Outcomes is familiar with the inventor perspective as well as the patent attorney perspective. We can facilitate communication between inventors and patent attorneys and ensure that all relevant in-house documentation is used to best effect in the patent text.
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Technical Information Experts
A core expertise of Technology Outcomes is to investigate complex and voluminous technical information held by the client (in notebooks and lab reports and workshop reports) in order to develop a patent narrative with maximum distance from prior art.
Address:
1/49 Cooper St Essendon, 3040 Melbourne Australia
Email:
info@technologyoutcomes.com.au
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We are excited to find out more about your technology package and where it sits in the commercialisation pathway! Please don't hesitate to make contact so we can chat, zoom or grab a coffee!