Use of the Material Provided in This Report

This section discusses the assumptions used in developing the report concerning how various users might use the presented material.  The assumptions and how they were addressed are directly related to how users can benefit from the report which is discussed in the “Benefits of the Report “ section.

Corporations

A major assumption was that most departments of a typical company eventually become involved with the intellectual property concerns of the company.  To understand this further, a number of specific ways the material could be used were listed for each department:

Use of the Report Material by Engineering

• Determine the technology state of the art.
• Determine what technical interest other companies have.
• Find out which companies are actively developing competing technology.
• Determine if any planned product features conflict with prior art.
• Get ideas to expand products using old technologies.
• Get ideas for new technology development.
• Structure ongoing R&D activity to avoid conflicts with competitors.
• Structure ongoing R&D activity to purposely create conflicts with competitors and block their patents.
• Locate outside inventors who can support internal product development.

Use of the Report Material by Manufacturing

• Benchmark internal methods against what others are doing.
• Determine if any existing methods used by the company conflict with prior patent art.
• Determine if any planned methods conflict with protected methods.
• Get ideas for new production methods.

Use of the Report Material by Marketing

• Determine what new technologies other companies are working on.
• Define the competitive environment for new technology.
• Quantify the ROI of potential options.
• Define the business case for current product features and develop a plan for future products.
• Create a roadway into the market for the company’s core technology to expand.
• Find and grab weak territory in competitor’s market strategies.
• Find and grab opportunities left by other companies that may have failed.
• Find and grab opportunities created by small inventors that have not been exploited.

 

Use of the Report Material by Sales

• Prepare geographical analysis of markets and competition.
• Differentiate company products from competitive products.
• Provide educational material for customers.
• Provide historical training material for the sales staff.

Use of the Report Material by Legal

• Patent search
• Claims analysis
• Technology analysis and structuring
• Models for writing new patents
• Source material for new patents
• Find prior art to disallow competitive patents
• Create a wall of protection for the core technology of the company
• Create a bank of high value technology trading cards to reduce the effect of legal attacks
• Bringing new personnel up to speed on the technology
• Gaining a quick understanding of the market for discussions with marketing and engineering

Use of the Report Material at the Executive level

• Understand the technical field from an overview perspective.
• Provide clear direction for future technology development.
• Provide incentives for internal technology innovation.
• Create a bank of high value technology trading cards to attract future investment
• Bringing new personnel up to speed on the technology and market

 

Legal Firms

The report lists 140 legal firms who prosecuted RFID related patents in 2003.  Legal firms face competitive pressures just like any other business.  The more information they have with regard to a particular subject, the better services they will be able to provide their clients.  Some specific uses a legal firm would be able to make of the material in this report are:

• Patent search - quick access to a very thorough patent search on RFID
• Claims structuring - the structure and content of claims can be developed based on industry practice
• Portfolio development - a high level overview of the technologies being prosecuted can be used to guide clients in selecting what issues to patent going forward
• Client prospecting – if the firm has skills applicable to RFID, the report will give them a list of inventors and firms who have used such services.
• Service promotion – a firm with RFID related skills may want to promote these skills by writing articles on the subject.  Having an index to the RFID patent history, with analysis, will greatly decrease research costs and provide directly useable market statistics.
• Litigation information – by laying out the RFID patent space, attorneys can quickly determine where to go to get relevant information.

 

Information Companies

Giving the industry an overview of what is going on is a primary role of information companies.  Such companies include magazines, trade associations, news letter groups, industry analysts, business promotion organizations etc.  Some specific uses they could make of the report are:

• Patent search – highlighting specific technology improvements.
• Competitive data – listing which firms are pursuing what technologies and applications
• Geographic data – looking at the dynamics of various locations in the country
• Filling out current offerings – a company might want to offer this material along with a market analysis they already have to provide a more comprehensive service.

 

Research Organizations

Research organizations like colleges and independent R&D labs, rely on knowing what is going on in any field to plan where to aim their future work.  A major need for them is having overview information for writing proposals.  Specific uses of the report for research organizations would be:

• Proposal development – to provide support information that shows the funding agent that the company has a good knowledge of the field.
• Topic selection – a key factor in winning awards is knowing what people are looking for.  The report shows what the industry is investing in.  It also allows evaluation of new ideas against the full range of what has been done.
• Client prospecting – for research organizations with RFID experience, the report shows which commercial firms are investing in development of this technology.

 

Venture Capital

Understanding the market is one of the major issues faced for every funding decision.  Efficiency means getting a market answer in the shortest time for the least cost.  This report can give you these kinds of answers for the RFID market:

• Who is actually doing what - cut through all the marketing hype.  Here are the names and numbers for the underlying technology.
• How unique is what they have? – the technology actually patented is described, “in English”.
• How do we quantify the space?  - the report provides a structure to do this.
• How crowed is the space? - the report quantifies the data according to the structure.
• How can we gauge whether the entrepreneurs know what they’re talking about?  The report is thorough.
• Who owns what? – Start with the patent assignee lists.
• What novelty does the entrepreneur have and is it sustainable? – Check it out against the patent maps.

 

Technical Recruiters

Recruiting has become very competitive.  Many recruiters only focus on very narrow market niches.  The benefit of this is an ability to accumulate knowledge in the niche.  This report can provide appropriate information very quickly.  Some examples:

• Client prospecting – if the firm has candidates with skills applicable to RFID, the report will provide a list of firms who are interested in these skills.
• Prospecting door openers – the best way to make a strong impression on prospective clients is to give them information they don’t have.  This report will make you an instant expert.
• Service promotion – a firm with RFID related skills may want to promote these skills by writing articles on the subject.  Having an index to the RFID patent history, with analysis, will provide the information base to prepare these articles.
• Candidate allegiance – many candidates are very technology focused.  To keep them loyal, you need to speak their language.  This report gives you the language and the facts to impress them.

 

How Will the Material Be Used

Someone in a company will read about this report and order a copy.  They will probably have some very specific objective in mind.  They will access the information they need and solve their specific problem.  In the process, however, they will become aware that the material has a lot of additional uses.  To best fit these uses, however, the material may not be in ideal form.  They need to manipulate it, maybe sort it differently, only look at certain sections etc.  A list of companies from the report might become a list of competitors.  It would be nice to turn a list from the report into a list of headings.

 

How the Report Addresses these Uses

To support these uses, the following actions were taken:

The technical and application issues have been categorized based on current market usage.

Reports with significant technical innovations have been translated into technical English for quick reading. (available as a separate document)

The material is sorted in many ways so each of the different users will find applicable collections and organizations.

The data is provided in fully associated form so any basic association can be found.  Specifically, a composite table is provided which lists all the variables on a patent by patent basis. (available as a separate document)

The material is provided in Microsoft Word format so it is easy to extract for other applications (within the limitations of the liberal copyright provisions).

Liberal copyright provisions are included to allow reasonable use of the material.