Due Diligence
Do you want to acquire/buy patent rights? In the recent years, a strong and dynamic market has emerged for buying and selling patents. You should consider acquiring/buying patents, if you want to:
- Obtain freedom to operate (e.g. entering a new market, launching a new product, or adding new functionality to an existing product)
- Enforce against an aggressor
- Stop your competitors from entering a market segment
- Grow an IP portfolio in less time
- Strengthen your stand in cross-licensing discussions
Before investing in any patent portfolio, it is essential to perform an exhaustive due diligence study to assess the real strength of the patents being considered for acquisition. We, at Winsome IP, offer you a comprehensive due diligence solution including the following checks.
- Technical Analysis – Analyzing the patents in-depth to identify the application areas and the applicability of the patented invention in today’s market. Also, checking if the patented invention is core to the technical area it belongs to.
- Ownership – Checking the current ownership of the patents by analyzing the assignment history
- Patent Term – Determining the age of the patents by calculating the expiry dates and going through the prosecution history
- Scope of Independent Claims – Analyzing in detail the independent claims to determine if the claims provide useful scope of protection.
- Validity Assessment – Performing a prior art search to uncover any close/ relevant prior art references
- File History Analysis – Analyzing the file history in detail for amendments and prosecution history estoppels
- Family Members – Checking for missing family members and their legal status
- Evidence of Usage (EoU) by Competitors/Others – Performing exhaustive product search to identify infringing products/services. We can either focus on a specific set of competitors or run open searches to identify all the players using the patent technology. Due to our sound technical background, we have the required skills to study technology standards in detail and check for infringement.
- Preparation of EoU/Claim Charts – Generating detailed claim charts. EoU/Claims charts are documents that illustrate the extent of overlap between one or more claims and a target product.