Solve your IP problems

How do I generate revenue off of my patents?

The three primary ways a company can monetize their portfolio is through sales, licensing, or litigation. Most corporations however do not know where to start and who might be interested or affected by the corporation’s patent portfolio.
 

 
Cardinal’s experienced staff can assist in identifying potential buyers through landscape searches, or potential licensees or litigation targets via assertion searches. Additionally, Cardinal has financial and technical experts that can provide you with a valuation for an individual patent or an entire patent portfolio so you know what to expect for compensation.

How do I minimize overhead expenses?

Budgets continue to get tighter and most companies and law firms are continuously looking for new ways and strategies to streamline their processes and reduce their expenses. Cardinal can help. Whether it is through bulk pricing search discounts, managed docketing services, paralegal services, or our e-discovery services, Cardinal can provide you with the quality and pricing that meets your needs.
 

 
Additionally, through our monetization services, we can identify patents in your portfolio that no longer serve a strategic purpose –saving you maintenance fees and reducing your overhead expenses.

How do I reward and incentivize inventorship?

As the need to acquire and protect intellectual property grows, companies are looking for ways to encourage employees to create and submit new inventions. One of the most successful methods used by corporations to accomplish this goal is through inventor reward programs. Utilizing input from our clients, Cardinal has developed a tool (Invention Disclosure Evaluation & Analysis System, “IDEAS”) that provides clients with numerous reward options to best fit their culture and needs. Additionally, IDEAS is a collaboration portal with advanced features and workflows to help you manage your invention disclosure process.

 

 

Starting with the original submission, and continuing through the final decision of whether to proceed with filing a patent application, IDEAS facilitates:
 

    • Collaborative disclosure preparation

 

    • Committee reviews

 

    • Patentability searches

 

    • Defensive publications

 

    • Securing Trade Secrets

 

    • Inventor awards administration

 

    • IPPC docket integration

How do I obtain venture capitalist funds?

Success in obtaining funding usually hinges on two thing: how strong the business idea is and how well that idea is vetted and presented. While Cardinal will not provide you with the next great invention, we can provide you with the necessary research to satisfy most investors due diligence requirements.
 

Some of the most commonly asked questions by investors are:
 

    • Who are your potential competitors?

 

    • Do you have IP protecting your idea, and if so, is it valid? and;

 

    • Are you free to practice your idea without the threat of patent litigation

 
 
Through the use of Cardinal’s landscape, validity, and freedom-to-operate search services, all three of these questions can easily be answered, giving your investors peace of mind and enabling you to receive the necessary funds to take your idea to the next level.

I need to track my competitors, what should I do?

Competitive intelligence is an essential component of any business strategy, especially when it comes to monitoring a competitor’s patent portfolio. How to implement tracking is uniquely dependent on your business objectives and desired level of information. Cardinal’s unmatched competitive monitoring expertise and services can help you craft a unique solution that best fits your needs.
 

 

Cardinal offers collection searches where you are provided all of the patent assets an assignee holds, PatentWatch services that monitor for new patents based on industry, technology or companies, and SCORE services that allow you to analyze your potential litigation risks and licensing opportunities. Additionally, if you are aware of a particular patent application of interest, Cardinal offers PAIR Alerts that provide e-mail notifications for prosecution or filing updates made through the Public PAIR system.

What is the best way to understand my litigation exposure?

The cost of patent litigation continues to rise and knowing what patents might threaten your products or services is essential to a company’s strategic plans. clearance searches identify patents and published applications that may pose an infringement risk either in the US or another jurisdiction of interest. Once a problematic patent or published application is identified, determining the enforceability of that patent is important and can be determined via an invalidity search.

 

 

In the case of a problematic published application, monitoring the prosecution developments via PAIR Alerts, will give you up-to-date status and a better understanding of your exposure to that application. Additionally, periodic monitoring of industry, technology or competitor companies through PatentWatch will allow you to know what technology is covered by patents, who owns the patents, and enables you to run analytics on your competitor’s IP portfolios.