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Patents reveal what competitors have up their sleeves Online databases can yield clues on innovation efforts, says Evalueserve
http://www.research-live.com/news_story.aspx?pageid=30&r=y&newsid=3871

INDIA-- Research and analytics firm Evalueserve has been demonstrating the competitive intelligence that can be gleaned from the internet’s patent databases.

In an exercise designed to showcase some of the techniques behind its bespoke services, the firm looked at patents held or applied for by technology giants Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo and Google. Among its discoveries is that Google may be working on a Google Phone, and targeting the TV and videogame advertising markets.

Evalueserve says the key to finding out what competitors have up their sleeves lies in correlating information from multiple sources. The standard database of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is often the first port of call, but more digging is usually required to find out who each patent belongs to – since ownership details can be withheld, and can change over time.

The firm also trawled through the USPTO’s patent assignment database, which records ownership, as well as files held by the European Patent Office and the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

In Google’s case, less than a quarter of patents and applications could be found through the standard database, said Balwant Rawat, Evalueserve’s manager of intellectual property services. Rawat told Research: “A typical researcher might not be able to identify who is the owner. What we’re seeing is that we can combine several databases to yield a more complete and more reliable search.”

Evalueserve, which employs 210 people in intellectual property research, found hundreds of patents belonging to Google, including a mobile phone case and software relating to mobile telephony. There were also several patents involving the delivery of dynamic videogame ads.

The firm said: “Since these leading edge companies are constantly innovating and creating barriers for their competitors, they are also continuously filing patent applications and getting many if not most of them granted. Hence, searching through databases… is one way of gaining an insight into the strategic direction of these companies.”

Author: Robert Bain
Published on the 29th October 2007

Patent Office Rule Changes Alter the Patent Landscape

Search, you’ll find Google ads on mobile, TV

The Financial Express
Vrishti Beniwal
Posted online: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 at 0116 hrs IST

New Delhi, Oct 2 Google may soon reach out to mobile phone users, TV viewers and video game lovers. A search by Evalueserve into the database of the US Patent and Trademark Office revealed that the California-based company is looking at newer fields like broadcasting ads directly to TV, embedding ads in video games and payments at shopping malls via mobile phones.

Currently, the search engine gets most of its revenue from Internet advertising, with Google-owned sites generating $2.49 billion, or 64% of total revenues, in the April-June quarter. But now the search engine is expanding its horizon and may soon come up with a receiver circuit that can enhance the performance of an audio/video receiver such as digital TV.

It may also come up with a method for enhancing video games systems by providing ads, prizes and other benefits to gamers.

A visual mobile search system that utilises images captured by cellphone cameras is also on the cards. This may facilitate image recognition, bar code reading and automatic payment processing at Google servers.

According to Madan Mohan, director (consulting), ICT practice, Frost & Sullivan, “Most of these services are search-based, which is the core competency of Google. It is looking at finding consumption patterns through algorithm, which will help target customised ads to the right individual. This kind of personal information is not available till now. Concerns have been raised that this might be a violation of individual privacy.”

A Google spokesperson, when contacted, said, "We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don't. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patent applications.”

Meanwhile, Yahoo is also looking at the concept of Television 2.0, that is similar to Web 2.0. This implies TV will become an online social network where users will interact in real time. “It will no more be ‘I produce, you consume’. Companies are looking at a two-way interaction platform, where the user participates in content creation,” said Mohan.