Benefits of the Report

The primary objectives of this report are to:

• Gather together a comprehensive representation of relevant RFID patent information
• Read and interpret what the patents say
• Organize the patent information into meaningful categories
• Present the information in easy to read and interpret formats

The result of this effort is to bring to firms and individuals the following specific benefits:

 

Saving time – time to market

Every one of the cost reductions listed below has a significant benefit. But each one also has a related time element.   Doing these tasks yourself not only costs money, it also incurs the time required for each of the people in each of the departments to do them.   This shows up on the bottom line as delayed time to market for the product.   And, it they are doing patents, who's doing the other work? These two distractions typically swamp the costs related to the patent work involved.

 

Reduced patent search costs

Patent searching is done for a large number of reasons.  Many of these were discussed in the “Use of the Material” section.  It is very expensive to perform a thorough search.  It is especially labor intensive if the search is iterative, which most are.  That is, an initial search is done.  A limited number of citations are found and copied.  Based on reading those patents, additional searching is found to be needed.  This process is repeated over and over.  For anyone exploring RFID technology patents, using this report can save a lot of money just on searching.

Reduced reading costs

Once the patent search is done and patent documents obtained, multiple people have to read the patents to make decisions.  Due to the legal wording and technical subject matter used in patents, this is a very laborious task.  It requires finding people who are, simultaneously, skilled at reading the legal wording, who understand the technology involved, and have the time and patience to slug through thousands of pages of material.  Such people are hard to find.  Their time is expensive and therefore costly.  The English language translation part of this report can drastically reduce these costs for people who have to read the whole patent.

For those who only need to look at patent summary information, this document also provides a helpful service.  Patents are often, even purposefully, filed with non-descriptive or misleading titles.  All of the patents in the 2003 table have added descriptions where the official title is not adequate.

Reduced analysis costs

As patents are read and interpreted, the information they contain needs to be extracted, organized, stored, analyzed and put into forms that can be communicated to others.  This is a complex and time consuming process.  It requires the cooperation of people from engineering, who understand the technology, legal, who understand the language and marketing, who understand the customers and application needs.  This report, by already doing this task, can substantially reduce these costs.

Reduce administrative cost

To be effective, any effort related to patent development needs to be guided by an effective method.  Developing such a method requires administrative effort which typically crosses multiple corporate departments.  This report employs an effective multi-department method developed over many years, which provides the structure for the analysis.  This report, by already having a method, can substantially reduce these costs.

Reduce risk

Finding motivated talent with the right skills to review patents in different technology areas is difficult.  When we add in the usual condition of time pressure and limited resources, this quickly translates into “Mission Impossible”.  Many companies give up right from the beginning and just adopt an ad-hoc approach.  Even the best companies usually fall back on a “best effort” system.  The results predictably match the approach.  Bad work in the intellectual property area can lead to very expensive surprises down the road.  This report was prepared by an engineer with knowledge of patents, data analysis, corporate use of patent data and specifically RFID technology.  Using this report can substantially reduce the risks of an ad-hoc or “best effort” system.

Improve accuracy

Addressing risk usually implies trying to avoid some significant catastrophe.  Risk can also be ignored just by thinking that bad things only happen infrequently.  There is another element of the process, however, that is applicable all the time.  This is marketing, and specifically, how accurately do we understand our competitive situation.  Most companies do pretty well understanding marketing from the promotional side – packaging, pricing, positioning, sales, fulfillment etc.  But they are less successful with the technical side of marketing – competitive functional analysis, defensive blocking, offensive end runs etc.  Again, it is a matter of finding and affording the right talent.  This report can significantly improve RFID product technical marketing.

Summary

In summary, using this report, which is equivalent to outsourcing part of the patent search and analysis task, can provide substantial benefits to companies with RFID interests.