As technology evolves and industries converge, IP professionals face increasing challenges in safeguarding their intellectual property. To stay ahead, businesses must proactively identify infringement risks through patent infringement analysis.
This article shares insights from Dr. Nina Müller, a Certified Patent Engineer at GOTTSCHALD Patentanwälte, one of Germany’s leading IP law firms. Dr. Müller outlines how her firm applies a structured analytics process using LexisNexis® PatentSight+™ to detect and communicate infringement threats effectively.
Dr. Nina Müller is a seasoned professional with a robust academic background. She holds a master’s degree in biotechnology and a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering. As a certified patent engineer, she leads the A-Team within the TechCenter at GOTTSCHALD Patentanwälte. In her role, Dr. Müller provides strategic support to a diverse clientele. These include large corporations, SMEs, and startups, leveraging her extensive expertise to navigate complex patent landscapes. GOTTSCHALD Patentanwälte is renowned for its high-quality work and client service, earning recommendations in IAM Patent 1000 and The Legal 500. As she explained during our conversation, the firm has a unique structure. It integrates experienced patent attorneys with industry-oriented patent engineers in the TechCenter, facilitating comprehensive technical and legal support.
“The goal behind infringement hunting is to identify competitors who are potentially infringing on our clients’ patents,” Dr. Müller explains.
Here’s a step-by-step outline of how she achieved this:
Patent infringement analysis, also referred to as infringement hunting, is the systematic process of discovering whether competitors’ products or technologies overlap with patented claims. Without this proactive approach, companies risk:
Dr. Müller highlights that even when infringement is detected, a significant hurdle remains: explaining these risks to non-technical stakeholders.
PatentSight+ analyses and intuitive charts add valuable context to the communication by providing data-driven insights and compelling reports. Dr. Müller highlights how useful PatentSight+ has been, saying, “The feedback that we’ve been receiving so far is that, for all our clients, it is a very useful analysis.”
Dr. Müller on client feedback “The feedback that we’ve been receiving so far is that, for all our clients, it is a very useful analysis,”
“The feedback that we’ve been receiving so far is that, for all our clients, it is a very useful analysis,”
Dr. Müller takes a multi-step approach to infringement hunting, using PatentSight+ to ensure that potential issues are surfaced from the reliable patent database.
Below is an overview of her approach, based on a case within the MedTech space:
The first task is identifying key players in the technology area. Dr. Müller uses a CPC code (CPC: A61B2017/00203, robotic-assisted surgical systems) to conduct a search in the PatentSight+ database to develop an initial understanding of the technology landscape. She then generates a high-level overview of patent owners in her chosen area in PatentSight+, leveraging the LexisNexis Patent Asset Index quality metric. This allows Dr. Müller to discern between portfolios that are of high significance to the technology area and their owners. This landscape serves as a foundation for later benchmarking.
After creating the landscape, Dr. Müller investigates the main trends observed in the identified portfolios using PatentSight+’s visualization capabilities.
She generates two important graphs:
Portfolio Size Graph: Tracks changes in patent portfolio size over time, helping identify patent owners expanding their arsenal in the technology space.
Patent Asset Index Graph: Evaluates portfolio quality based on citation analysis, relevance, and geographical coverage to differentiate between high and low-quality portfolios.
Figure 1: (Left) Qualitative view of the trends observed in the patent portfolios related to speech controllers and recognition in surgical devices. (Right) Portfolio size trends observed in the same technology.
The charts show a significant increase in Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) portfolio size and quality in patent families related to speech-controlled surgical devices since 2018. Dr. Müller thus considers them a potential infringement risk.
Dr. Müller turns to citation analysis, the next step in her process of identifying infringement risks. Citations reveal how patents are interrelated and whether companies are building on each other’s innovations.
In this case, Dr. Müller examined the portfolios of companies that owned patents marked as X citations in the J&J portfolio; these show a high likelihood of overlap in technology and, therefore, an opportunity for infringement. To identify the company or patent owner with the most influential portfolio, Dr. Mueller used the Patent Asset Index to separate the wheat (high-quality portfolios) from the chaff (lower-quality patent portfolios) in the visualization.
Figure 2: (Left) Citation trends of Prior art with X citations to the Johnson and Johnson portfolio in this technology space. (Right) Patent families that cite the Intuitive Surgical portfolio as Prior art with X citations.
One portfolio stood out in the analysis. She discovered that J&J was heavily building on Intuitive Surgical’s patents. As the chart on the left in Figure 2 shows, J&J cited 14 patent families owned by the latter. In the second chart, which highlights the patents from Intuitive Surgical cited by other companies, it becomes clear that nearly a quarter of J&J’s portfolio in this space is derived from the previously identified 14 patent families owned by Intuitive Surgical. This highlights a significant overlap in their portfolios and, therefore, a high risk of infringement by J&J.
Finally, Dr. Müller aligns her analysis with broader industry trends to verify her findings. She had heard about J&J’s new robotic surgical system and knew it was designed to compete with Intuitive Surgical’s Da Vinci System. This context reinforced her findings, further supporting the possibility of infringement and enabling her to advise her clients on preventative measures and proactively developing negotiation tactics.
Infringement hunting is a key strategy for protecting intellectual property. As Dr. Müller demonstrates, systematically identifying risks requires a combination of legal expertise, technical knowledge, and advanced analytics. Communicating infringement risk is often the hardest part of the process, particularly when addressing stakeholders who are unfamiliar with patents. With PatentSight+, she quickly pinpointed companies that pose a potential infringement risk, analyzed key trends, and presented them in a visually compelling format that clearly illustrates the underlying data and reasoning.
Ultimately, Dr. Müller leveraged the analytical and visualization capabilities of PatentSight+ to tackle a common challenge faced by IP professionals: effectively communicating IP insights to stakeholders or decision makers who may not have deep IP knowledge. This is where reliable data, insightful visualizations and clear reporting become essential. Instead of just describing overlap, you show it in a visual way, which makes your case easier to understand and harder to ignore.
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