Role of Patent Analysis in Business Strategy

A Patent is the right provided to an inventor not for the use or practice of the invention but for preventing others from practicing or using the invention. In the recent years the role of patents has changed dramatically. Patents used to be the concern of only a bunch of legal practitioners or specialists and no one else was really bothered. But with changing times and ever increasing competition in business, patents have become a key factor for any business.

Patent analysis and information benefits many areas of business. It helps in getting the know-how of the relevant technology field in order to forecast market needs. This forms the basis of judging the right time to invest in R&D. Patent Analysis helps in getting an overview of the technologies the competitors’ are working on. This is a medium to assess the competitors’ strengths, weaknesses and most importantly business strategy.

Automation Landscape


It also plays a major role in licensing technologies/inventions. In mergers and acquisitions, the patent information helps in narrowing down the choices of the companies and technologies to consider. Patent analysis provides a source of technological information that can be used by researches and inventors to find new solutions to technical problems.

For starting a new business or a developing a new product or even buying out some company, it becomes important to go through the patents’ database to make sure you are going in the right direction. Patent searching and analysis was a very tedious and time consuming job a couple of years ago when only patent experts could do this job manually sifting through a huge pile of patent files. But now there are patent analysis softwares available which are designed to make the job of patent searching much easier – and by a big Margin !