Develop an IPR strategy

Competitor monitoring enables you to anticipate risks and possibilities and ensure your freedom to operate

Do you know what your competitors have protected?

Our service will help you to obtain useful information about your competitors' operations, inventions and products, as well as of their general level of activity in protecting their IP rights. Thus you can pay attention to the existing IP rights in time and plan your own activities in the way that they will not infringe patents or other exclusive rights of others.

To develop a new technology or product is a big investment. There is no point of reinventing the wheel, or starting a new project, until you have researched what the others have already done – and protected. A good preliminary search significantly decreases risks related to a new development project.

With the help of competitor monitoring, you will be aware of your competitors' current activities and IPR protection: about the state of their IP protection as well as the geographical extent. A Kolster expert will tailor you a search profile, which will provide you with information in regular intervals on applications submitted in fields that interest you or on applications by a certain competitor of yours.

You will be provided information on applications submitted by your competitors, even before exclusive rights have been granted, and you can react in time to your competitors' protections. If the search reveals a trade mark application that could be confused with yours or a problematic patent application, we will examine them closely and find out about your chances to intervene.

Have you ensured your freedom to operate?

Even if a company makes a conscious decision not to protect the exclusive rights for its own intellectual property, this does not exempt it from its responsibility to ensure that the company itself does not infringe upon the rights of others. Every company should be prepared for IPR risks facing their own operations and secure the continuity of their business.

In the freedom to operate mapping (production impediment study), we examine, on the basis of the description of your new product or production method, whether there are patents upon which your new product might infringe. We will find out about your prospects to export your products, currently in the market, to a new marketplace. We also conduct a preliminary examination while your product is still in its planning stage. This prevents potential patent infringements and allows you to alter your product before its launch so it will not infringe upon existing patents.

In some country, a registered model might be found, forming an obstacle for your business. A model production and marketing impediment survey will help in anticipating risks, and will allow you to make the right decisions in time. If, on the other hand, you plan a new trade mark, it is worthwhile to find out whether the trade mark can be freely used in those countries where you want to register it.