Business intelligence through patent filings: An analysis of IP management strategies of ICT companies (full-text)

Business intelligence enables enterprises to make effective and good quality business decisions. In the knowledge economy, patents are seen as strategic assets for companies as they provide a competitive advantage and at the same time ensure the freedom to operate and form the basis for new alliances. Publication or disclosure of intellectual property (IP) strategy based on patent filings is rarely available in the public domain. Because of this, the only way to understand IP strategy is to look at patent filings, analyze them and, based on the trends, deduce strategy. This paper tries to uncover IP strategies of five US and Indian IT companies by analyzing their patent filings. Gathering business intelligence via means of patent analytics can be used to understand the strategies used by companies in advocating their patent portfolio and aligning their business needs with patenting activities. This study reveals that the Indian companies are far behind in protecting their IPs, although they are now on course correction and have started aggressively protecting their inventions. It is also observed that the rival companies in the study are not directly competing with each other in the same technological domain. Different patent filing strategies are used by firms to gain a competitive advantage. Companies make use of disclosure as strategy or try to cover many aspects of a technology in a single patent, thereby signaling their dominance in a technological area and at the same time as they add information.

https://ojs.hh.se/index.php/JISIB/article/view/322/pdf

Author(s): Shabib-Ahmed Shaikh, Tarun Kumar Singhal
Organization(s): Symbiosis International University (SIU), Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies
Source: Journal of Intelligence Studies in Business
Year: 2018

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