Know the power of the State-of-the-Art

In this technological progressive era, huge amount of data gets generated and added in the prior art every day. Where on one hand keeping pace with technical progress in present times is a challenge and on the other hand, innovation has to happen to ensure sustainable growth. Till the time, you foresee the innovation in a given area of technology, it is impossible to create significantly creative and valuable products. Another issue in technologies such as electronics or software is that innovation cycle is too short, meaning that in no time after you market or commercialise the product, you may see next versions of the product floating around. Considering high cost of R&D and resources, output often is not that meaningful and sustainable.

In most of the companies, before designing R&D in a given area of technology, one important parameter is often missed out, i.e. assessment of “state of the art”. Even though by means of product surveys, competitors products or otherwise, the products available in market are often watched carefully but the wealth of technical information lying in the form of patents is largely ignored. It is important to note that few of the patented technologies actually come in the market, meaning that, there is huge amount of information, in the form of patents, which is not seen in the market. However, assessment of this wealth may help in various ways, such as:

1. It helps you to assess quality of your product and may be after knowing state of the art, you can further fine tune your product or add more value to it.

2. ‘State-of-the-Art’ may reveal many interesting ways of performing an invention, which you would have never thought about and this actually can add lots of value to existing product/process.

3. Assessment of patentability of the invention compared to state of the art becomes clear and easy.

4. The best thing about the information available in the form of a patent is the best mode of performing invention, known to the inventor. In most of the countries, patent law expects inventor to disclose the best mode of working the invention which means that from patent documents you actually get complete technical working of the invention, most of the times with illustrations, drawing and examples. 

“Even though by means of product surveys, competitors products or otherwise, the products available in market are often watched carefully but the wealth of technical information lying in the form of patents is largely ignored.”

5. Based upon State-of-the-Art, if you feel that your invention is significantly better than existing patents, you might consider filing for a patent yourself.

6. Infringement of patent happens when one makes, sells, offers to sale, import patented product or a product made from a patented process without permission of a patent holder. As a result of state-of-the-art search, you might come across a few patents or patent application (not been granted), that are very close to your invention. In such a case, it is worth looking at such patents in details and check for their validity (whether they are legally enforceable) or to see if they have been filed or granted in the country (ies), where you intend to market your product. If there are any such patents, you need to be careful as there are chances that you might be infringing such patents.

7. State of art data can take various forms and interpretation of such data into various graphs can provide you valuable information in terms of key players, active areas of technology, patent filing, publication and grant trends, favorable jurisdictions, international classification etc. This data may play a vital role in formulating patent strategies for the organization.

State-of-the-art is a wealth of knowledge, infact a powerful tool that is important not only to prepare a strong base to formulate your R&D strategies but also assists in multiple ways. It is worth investing time to unfold state-of-art to create innovative, commercially viable and meaningful products to obtain competitive edge in market.