The rivalry heated up as Sandra’s start-up prepared to challenge the reigning champ in smartphone battery life. However, a good intellectual property strategy could gain tactical advantage. Her patent attorney team reviewed the competitive products, probing vulnerabilities. They identified unprotected features which could become foundational claims in cunningly crafted patent applications to help Sandra’s company outmaneuver the competition.

Drafting claims covering competitors’ products is a tightrope walk that causes many clients, and their outside counsel, to regularly utilize the services of Global Patent Solutions. Done properly, a patent claim blueprint maps out exclusionary territory impeding rival offerings now and into the future. But construed too broadly, thrilling words on paper fail scrutiny under legal doctrines like enablement or they open the patent to future invalidation. Working together, we can help you successfully navigate this terrain.

The priorities we evaluate with clients include:

• Researching strengths and weaknesses across competitive products ripe for IP protection
• Identifying protectable improvements not yet claimed in your field
• Enabling the drafting of multiple claim varieties – modest fallbacks to ambitious reach goals
• Ensuring claim breadth is aligned with established filing priority dates
• Validating claims comply with disclosure requirements in your applications

Patent portfolios should balance both defensive and offensive protections. Before competitors beat you to that next big battery breakthrough, intellectual property capture might be within reach! Global Patent Solutions helps innovative clients like Sandra’s company regularly generate rights that flip market positions to their favor.

Do your competitors offer clever features you’ve been thinking could use some patented leverage? Let our IP consultants investigate how to legally put your own innovative stamp on the marketplace. Reach out today to get crafting tactical claims that help you outmaneuver the competition and best secure your IP!

This article is part of a series entitled “A Guide to Protecting Your Innovations”.  To start the series at the beginning, click here.

Next up in our series, we address: “Maximizing Patent Potential through the Filing of Divisionals“