ITPEC IP April 2024 Question 85
Which of the following is an appropriate description of a “patent portfolio” that is important for establishing the patent strategy?
Explanation
A compilation of the company's patents, analysed for business contribution, synergy and fields of application — that is a patent portfolio.
A patent portfolio treats all the patents a company owns and has applied for as one set of assets. Each is assessed for how much it contributes to the business, how it works together with the others, which technologies it covers and where it could be applied. The picture shows where to file more, which patents to keep, license out or abandon, and where competitors are strong, which is the basis for a patent strategy.
Answer (a)
Why not others:
- •(b) — patent applications rising early in an innovation and falling as a dominant product emerges and the focus shifts to process innovation describes the dynamics of innovation (the Abernathy–Utterback model), not a set of patents
- •(c) — a matrix of own market share against market growth rate is PPM (product portfolio management), which positions products or businesses, not patents
- •(d) — patent holders granting each other licences to their patents is cross-licensing
Key rule: A portfolio in strategy is a set of assets judged as a whole: products and businesses in PPM, IT investments in an IT portfolio, patents in a patent portfolio.
Technological Strategy Management · AI-written, may contain errors
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