Business Metamorphosis LLC

Good Day--

Let me tell you about the many different things you can do with the Strategic Opportunity Cube-- A new tool for managing your intellectual property:

For creating it, organizing it, finding it, valuing it and identifying opportunities for new intellectual property generation.

One of our clients contacted us because their valuable patents were overflowing the file boxes stored on the floor of their attorney’s office. They didn’t know what they had or what they could do with it--

What to do if a licensing opportunity arose-
What to do if a competitor appeared to be inventing in the same area

Patents are like Real-Estate and that old saw from the world of real estate applies equally well to patents -- The value of a patent is based on the intellectual landscape that falls within its protective borders-- That is on its - LOCATION-, LOCATION, LOCATION.

But how do you define that LOCATION. You do it by mapping the patent within the boundaries set by other patents -- those owned by your competitors-- or potential partners-- -

You probably have your patents filed using some kind of system. Perhaps they are indexed by Inventor, or Filing Date, or patent number-- You may even use some indexing method like the Derwent codes. But does that really tell you anything useful about the patent and how it fits into the landscape of similar patents?

You may even have it logged into a searchable database that allows you to find it with a keyword search , such as that available on the USPTO web site. And that’s all well and good.

But what you undoubtedly don’t know is how the patent "FITs" the key parameters that are of interest to your company-- What TECHNOLOGYdoes it protect-- WHAT APPLICATIONS does it cover-- WHAT MARKET do those applications fit in.

And not only where does it fit today, but where MIGHT it fit - In a different market-- with other applications etc. That is the patent is very unlikely to have been filed STRATEGICALLY.

So the existing methods are inadequate when you have a problem in selling, licensing, infringement-- And they provide no way to compare your strategy with that of your competitors.

The cube looks at an assemblage of content from 3 different perspectives -- In this case, application, technology and market-- but other perspectives can be used such as [Media, Market, Artist] for content licensing applications-- I like to think of it as an assemblage of micro file cabinets into which we put like content--

The cube is a way of revealing relationships and storing information in a way that makes it possible to do strategic thinking . The cube is not a search engine. It is a place to organize the information you obtain using other means.

The cube was invented as a response to the inadequacy of current patent mapping techniques by Tom Szumla when he was at a Fortune 500 company.. Tom was given a problem of mapping hundreds of patents and he explored all the then available techniques.

He consulted the company’s patent mapping department and he reviewed the offerings of outside vendors, nothing would do the job.

Since Tom left the company we have improved the cube and automated many of its functions. We have also built another cube for another F500 company with a completely different product line. This cube had 30+ specialized filter fields. The company that hired BML for the job went through the same review of existing techniques that Tom had, again finding nothing to do the job.

Incidentally there is an excellent review article by Anthony Trippe of VERTEX corp on patent mapping techniques that we can make available to you.

The cube is a taxonomic classification tool. The most familiar taxonomy to most people is Lianas classification of plants and animals. What the cube does is take the top three relevant levels in a taxonomy and assigns them to the 3 perspectives which form the cube axes. However, more detail can be extracted by using "Filter" fields to focus in on particular items of interest. A cube we built had more than 30 filter fields.

Taxonomies have been used for patent classification for years. The USPTO uses one. However, the taxonomy they use is unfamiliar to anyone except patent attorneys and the USPTO. We feel to be useful, a taxonomy must fit the company employing it, and so we build a custom taxonomy for each customer that aligns with their unique perspectives.

Here’s some examples of different perspectives that might be used in different industries. The most common one , our standard set, is Technology, Application and Market.

However, in other industries other sets might be preferred.

Here’s one example of how the cube is used. In the example the horizontal axis is technology and the vertical is product. The two companies orange and green use different technologies to make some of the same products.

The companies compete on products Y8-Y11 but there are other products which are exclusively the purview of one or the other. While one doesn’t know what the limits of Orange’s technology is, one might imagine it would be interested in Green’s sizable position in market 7. Could orange make that product with its technology? Should green try a defensive patent at Y8,X5 to block? The cube indicates this is a possibility.

Perhaps green should be watching the patent applications filed by orange to see where it is taking its product development program.

Here is an example where the two companies have the same number of patents but Orange is much more diversified than Green. It has taken a position in 7 products while green only has 3. Could Green expand its technology into some of the product areas occupied by Orange? Should it consider making a deal? The worth of the Orange company might be placed higher by a valueer because its diversification makes it more robust against changes in the marketplace

In this example , Orange pretty much owns row Y5. Its large array of technologies allows it to make the products in row 5 by any one of a number of different methods. This makes Orange strong. If its favorite technology becomes obsolete, or is blocked by regulators or constricted by a lack of raw materials it can easily switch to another technology. Not so for the Green company. It has just a few ways to make its product. If the march toward the future leaves its technology behind, it will quickly loose its place in the market to orange.

In this example, Orange has offered to make a deal with Green to license 17 patents. However, many of the patents in the package are significantly removed from Green’s business area of interest (the dotted circle) . Green should consider making an offer for only the three patents that the cube shows will be of most benefit.

This example shows how the cube can be used to generate new intellectual property for a company. The patents in dark green are those owned by the company. The Red squares are patents held by its competitors. The blue squares are represent R&D currently going on but not patented. At a brainstorming session the company decides that it needs to meet its competitors by coming up with new ideas in the orange squares. These ideas may stem from extensions of its existing patents, the R&D going on , or a desire to block the activities by Red to protect its market position.