Patent Watch

What it does

A patent search is only right on the day you run it. This keeps the answer current. It watches the European Patent Office data for new publications, grants and changes in other parties' patents that matter to you, and reports them in a form you can act on.

Watches are set up by an attorney together with you, so that the profile reflects the question behind it: a freedom-to-operate opinion that must stay valid, a competitor whose strategy you follow, or a technology field you may enter.

The watch looks outward. Your own filings, their register status and their deadlines are handled by our portfolio and renewals function.

Functions

Watch profiles

Input: a watch profile agreed with you. Three kinds are common:

• A party watch follows named applicants or inventors, typically competitors, licensors or a start-up you consider acquiring.
• A subject watch follows technical classes or keywords, for example the classification groups around your product, to see who files in your field.
• A status watch follows specific patents or applications whose procedural status matters to you, for example a patent you may have to design around, or an application that could be granted against you.

A profile may combine these.

Scheduled runs and comparison

Output: a scheduled run against EPO data that reports new publications, grants and changes. Each run is compared with the previous one, so you see what is new and not the entire result set again.

Review of hits

Each new hit is read by an attorney or by a member of the team working under one. The hit is sorted as irrelevant, worth monitoring, or requiring action. Relevant hits are tied back to the question the watch serves, such as a freedom-to-operate analysis in progress. The legal tests behind that reading are explained in freedom-to-operate analysis and prior art and how to search for it.

Triage follows a few plain questions. Is it an application or a granted patent? Which jurisdictions does it cover? Does a claim come close to your product or process? What is its current status? A late-stage application with a close claim ranks above a granted patent in a country where you do not operate.

Reporting in the client portal

Watch results appear in the client portal, where you review hits and instruct us. Periodic digests summarise what changed.

Choosing and adjusting a profile

Profiles are not fixed. After the first runs, the attorney reviews with you which hits were useful and which were noise, and narrows or widens the profile accordingly. Every change is recorded, so that you can see what the watch covered at any date.

What you receive

• A watch report after each run, limited to what is new.
• A short assessment from an attorney of the hits that matter, with a recommended action.
• Status information on the specific patents you follow.
• Alerts on the changes that may call for a decision, for example a competitor patent in your field that has just been granted.

The watch covers what the EPO data covers. Applications are published around 18 months after filing, so a watch cannot show filings that have not been published yet. It reports what the data shows and an attorney interprets it.

Where a hit requires a decision, such as a competitor patent that touches your product, the attorney drafts a short note for you with the document, the relevant claim, the status and a recommended next step. Where a watch finds nothing, you are told so, because a quiet run is also information. Nothing happens without your say-so and an attorney's sign-off.

The grant of a European patent matters in particular because of the opposition period. Anyone may file an opposition within nine months of the publication of the mention of the grant. When a watch shows that a competitor's patent has been granted, the attorney notes that window in the note to you, so that you can decide in time whether to oppose.

Where it is used

The main use is in patent research: after a patentability or freedom-to-operate opinion, a watch keeps the conclusion up to date and warns you when a new filing changes the picture. Analysis of an individual hit is carried out with our patent analysis and research function.

A walk-through: after a freedom-to-operate opinion on a pump design, the attorney sets up a watch on three competitors and two classification groups. On the first run the function lists all matching documents as the baseline. In the following quarters it reports only new publications. In the third run a competitor's application appears with a claim close to the pump's key feature. The attorney reads it, notes that it is only an application and not yet granted, records it in the file, adds it to the watch as a status watch and tells you what to monitor. If it is later granted, the attorney informs you of the nine-month opposition window, the opinion is updated, and you decide whether to oppose.