Technology Enabled Tools for the IP Industry
Intellectual Property (IP) tools are essential today to help make informed strategic business decisions. We are working towards putting the best possible technology in the hands of inventors, IP professionals, and business leaders, via our Relecura platform.
I would like to draw a parallel between the current IP industry and the semiconductor industry back in the 1970’s. Since the 1970s, the semiconductor industry has been hard-pressed to keep up with the prediction of Moore’s law. The industry was quick to recognize that simply increasing human resources would not be a solution but it would also require significant improvements in their productivity. This resulted in the advent of tools and processes to close the productivity gap, resulting in the growth of an Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry. Today, the semiconductor industry in large part owes its success to the US $5-6 billion EDA tool industry.
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The IP industry/ecosystem is currently facing a similar situation to that of the semiconductor industry of the 1970s. The questions in IP are getting more complex - ranging from the accurate assessment of the novelty of an invention to the valuation of an IP asset. Furthermore, each of the decisions made are valid for a given context and vary with time. Large amounts of data from diverse sources - including patent, scientific, legal and business - directly impact major decisions in IP. It is becoming humanly impossible to process all the relevant data in a timely manner. These questions arise at various stages of the IP lifecycle - from generation, analysis, valuation, and commercialization. The enormity of the problem and the importance of tools to aid in making the right IP-related decisions, cannot be stressed enough.
On the positive side, a large amount of the data relevant to IP-related analysis is now openly accessible. Rapid research in different technology streams is providing improved techniques to effectively analyze the data. We are now in a position to provide IP professionals with better tools to address the challenges before them.
One of the essential requirements of the next generation of IP tools will be the ability to not simply search, but also to extract and connect key information from diverse forms of data and provide insights into the IP-related questions posed by individuals at different levels in an organization. Even though the questions posed are complex, the tool should ideally deliver only the relevant bits tailored to each individual preferably via a simple and intuitive interface.
Relecura uses knowledge discovery based algorithms to extract key information and uses methods to connect the diverse bits of information in a meaningful way. We strive to make the best use of the technology available in different disciplines to solve problems in IP, technology landscaping, and competitive intelligence.
We seek the help of our customers, partners, other tool vendors, academicians and data providers to collectively grow the Patinformatics sector to be able to better solve the problems faced by the IP industry, both today and in the future. We believe that by working together, we can grow the ecosystem for intelligent tools that support IP professionals and help them make informed decisions in a timely manner.