About patent information

What is it?

Patent information is vital to a broad range of professions from technical developers and researchers to legal advisers and business strategy managers.

Patent information is the name we give to the technical information you find in patent documents, plus any legal information about them.

Why use it?

There are many good reasons for using patent information. More than anything else, it can help you make informed decisions when choosing strategies for researching or developing new products.

You can use patent information to:

• Find out what already exists and build on it

If you are faced with a technical problem, there is no better way of finding out what solutions already exist than by looking at patents.

• Keep track of who’s doing what

The technical details of research being carried out by your competitors may well appear first in a patent document, long before the product reaches the marketplace. By monitoring patent documents you can keep an eye on your business competitors, or even locate potential partners. You can also use patent information to identify patents that are no longer in force and can be freely used. Finally, by watching patent publications, you can spot trends in technology or the market at an early stage.

• Avoid infringing other people’s patent rights:

Before you put a new product on the market or offer a new service, you need to make sure that you will not be infringing someone else’s patent. Patent information will help you here too.