To grow and protect your business, you need a gap-free patent portfolio. Developing such a portfolio requires careful planning based on an understanding of your current business and business plan, your technology, and the competitive landscape in which you are operating.

A patent gap is any lack of patent protection that can hurt your business, such as:

• Failure to obtain a patent on a technology that is critical to your next-generation product line. This results in making that technology freely available for your competitors to use.
• Selling a product that is patented by one of your competitors, thereby exposing you to a patent infringement lawsuit from that competitor. One way to fill this gap is to obtain patents that cover the competitor's products.
• Obtaining patent protection on one of your products but not on the processes performed by that product, or vice versa. This results in having only partial protection for your technology.
• Obtaining a patent that is too narrowly focused on the version of the product that you are selling today. This results in making the patent obsolete when you release a new version of the product.

Although every patent must be treated as unique because every invention is unique, computer patents require special attention to avoid creating gaps in protection. For example:

• Computer hardware and software technology develops particularly rapidly, thereby making it particularly important to think ahead and craft computer patents to cover future technological developments as much as possible.
• A single algorithm (procedure) can often be implemented using many kinds of hardware and software, thereby making it particularly important for computer patents to cover multiple implementations of the algorithm.
• Software can be sold commercially in many forms, such as in software products (such as on CDs and in software downloadable from the Internet) or in software-based services (such as web-based software made available for an ongoing subscription fee), thereby making it particularly important for software patents to cover all such forms of the patented software.

Each patent in a computer patent portfolio, therefore, must be crafted with an understanding of how the invention relates to competing technologies that exist today and might exist tomorrow, to avoid obtaining patents that are obsolete by the time they are granted. The portfolio as a whole must be managed to track both the direction of your business and its relationship to your competitors, to make the portfolio useful both offensively and defensively. For example, we may advise you to own patents that you can use against a competitor to defend yourself in case you are sued by the competitor. Furthermore, many companies acquire patents neither to sue nor to be sued, but to add value to the company for purposes of obtaining investment or merging with or being acquired by another company.

Robert Plotkin, P.C. creates patent portfolios for its clients from the ground up to avoid creating gaps in the first place. We do this by immersing ourselves in each client's business and technology and creating a detailed patent roadmap outlining the steps necessary to protect the client's business, both by obtaining patents and avoiding infringing the patents of competitors. For each potentially patentable invention, we perform a patentability investigation to determine whether the invention is patentable. For each patentable invention we prepare and file patent applications domestically and, if warranted, internationally. We analyze competitors' patents and advise our clients on how to design around those patents to avoid infringement.

We also analyze existing patent portfolios to identify and fill the gaps in them. Gaps in a patent portfolio are like cracks in a dam; filling them sooner rather than later is both more effective and less costly. Performing a patent gap analysis involves evaluating the client's existing patent portfolio and comparing its coverage to the client's business and to the businesses of competitors. One way to address any identified gaps in coverage is to prepare and file additional patent applications, covering the client's technology and/or the technology of competitors. In some situations such patent applications must be filed quickly to avoid missing deadlines imposed by law. We then design and execute a patent roadmap for the client's future technologies to avoid creating gaps in the future.

Contact Robert Plotkin, P.C. today to find out how we can help you to avoid creating gaps in your patent portfolio or identify and fill the gaps in your existing patent portfolio.