Over the last few weeks, I got an opportunity to review an innovative online tool that leverages patent filing big data to uncover business intelligence specifically designed to aid in business development for IP firms - Filing Analytics by Practice Insight
We all know IP data to be a fantastic source of business intelligence. Who is working on what technology, and who has the largest portfolio? Who has shown foresight, and who managed to protect a larger slice of the price? Typical R&D, legal or licensing questions can these days be answered by proper interrogation of patent search and analytics databases.
Business Intelligence for IP Law and Attorney Firms
However, there is another angle on the data that can help IP firms, not corporates, grow their business. In-depth understanding of who is filing what, with whom and for whom, in which countries, can be a powerful business development weapon. Particularly for firms in countries that cannot grow from local innovation alone.
Historically, most firms will have applied their best strategic judgment, or even relied on disperse data sources to make decisions on who to partner with on national entry filings, or which patent owning organisations to pursue. Imagine a tool that could connect and analyse billions of IP data records and link them together for actionable insight —all at the tap of a finger on your smartphone?
Practice Insight’s product Filing Analytics is an online tool that manages to do just that. It organises worldwide IP data and transforms it into an intelligent and objective view of the patent filing market covering all major jurisdictions. It takes the guesswork out of business development and makes a firm’s planning targeted and more effective.
How did Filing Analytics come about?
Filing Analytics was developed by Thomas Haines, a former software engineer and patent attorney. With his firsthand IP industry knowledge, he designed and developed Filing Analytics specifically to the unique needs of patent attorneys.
Since its release, Filing Analytics has become the world's most powerful market
and competitor analysis tool in IP, unrivalled by any other IP software solution. It examines and analyses intellectual property firms and applications worldwide, with filings covering more than 56,000 firms across 33 countries.
Filing Analytics brings big data together and finds linkages to information that previously couldn’t be done. With law firms now operating in a more competitive environment, the ability for them to access and utilise insightful IP data is something that they know will give them a competitive edge over others.
Perhaps most useful for capturing market share in stagnant as well as growing markets, is Filing Analytics’ ability to break down case flows over time, displaying the latest workflow trends from corporates to firms to associates, allowing the user to spot trends before others.
What are the actual use cases of filing analytics?
- Maximise the value from those international trips, making them focused and efficient: I am travelling to Berlin to see an associate. Who else could I go see in the area who’s got potential? One can use the Map Explore feature in Filing Analytics to zoom in on a city and identify high potential partners to visit.
- Make your conference planning and meetings count: The conference circuit is warming up again, with INTA, Global IP Exchange and others just around the corner. If you had time for only five meetings – who should they be with? Perhaps time to study the reciprocity and filing trend charts.
- Focus marketing and business development efforts on corporations where real opportunities exist: Corporation X would be an interesting target. Are they even filing in my country? Are they filing themselves, or are they in fact locked into a contract with just one firm?
- Spot an opportunity arising from changing preferences: Who are the top Firms filing for Corporation X? For those top Firms, has their workflow been trending up or down over the past 3 years?
- Discover new business opportunities before others: From the Filing Analytics charts, you might discover a Firm trending upwards that seems new and looks interesting to work with. Who are they working within my region?
- Qualify your leads and prepare: Firm A in China would be a great partner to do business with. Who do they currently work with most in my country? And who are the applicants they file for?
As the inventor, where does Tom Haines see the benefit?
“Filing Analytics is becoming the typical tool for IP firms,” Thomas Haines explains. “ To make informed decisions, an IP firm should know what local patent firms and corporations are filing, what technology they’re strong in, and who their clients are. One needs to be up-to-date about what competitor firms are doing, and what strategies they’re putting into place for their clients from a jurisdictional point of view.”
“With Filing Analytics, I wanted to create a tool that let’s IP professionals spend more time winning business and serving existing clients, and less time trawling through massive datasets from disparate databases. We’ve seen a lot of inefficiencies in firms’ administration teams replicating the same manual and laborious processes of gathering a narrow snapshot of information at best. And this process was being repeated across most firms in one guise or another.
I’ve seen many practitioners being constrained to make decisions by guesswork due to the absence of a managed and updated web-based information service that could meet their needs. We set out to remedy this by making a shared high quality filing information service available, to provide firms with a much greater return on their investment.”, says Mr Haines.
Indeed, it gives IP professionals a whole new business insight into the world’s IP data.
For further information on Filing Analytics and Practice Insight, please contact
Erika Dauner, Marketing Officer, Global Business Development & Customer CarePractice Insight GmbH.