From Indoor Success to Outdoor Innovation with IP
A senior intellectual property (IP) counsel and R&D director from a multinational consumer products manufacturer approached Perception Partners with the intention of expanding into outdoor pest control.
Challenge: Motivated by competitive market expansion & strong brand recognition, the client team sought insights related to outdoor pest control devices. The requirements included identifying market leading offerings, assessing competitive product IP strengths, uncovering unprotected technology gaps and evaluating third party solutions to unmet needs. The project was performed under leadership of senior IP counsel, to maintain legal privilege.
Navigating an established market by finding white spaces. Outdoor pest control, despite being well-established and mature, is constantly evolving with opportunities for innovation as pests develop resistance or aversion to prior solutions. Novel ways to attract, repel, trap and kill pests can create new market spaces with new revenue streams.
Identifying technical solutions in the IP landscape. The client team aimed to improve device-based solutions from other markets to accelerate protected market entry in this case. Through an IP landscape analysis focused on outdoor pest control, we curated patents, applications, literature and news records to be shared and visualized through our cloud-based Intellar dashboards. In particular, detailed global patent full text was categorized, tagged and commented to escalate IP opportunities and risks to the attention of the team.
Building consensus for actionable insights. A full-day onsite workshop was conducted with the team. We presented six key inventive schemes discovered from live dashboards review. Group discussion of the real-time filtered data in each scheme built consensus that outdoor insect control devices to automatically dispense safe pesticides at timed intervals were lacking in the market. The discussion further built confidence that programmable dispensing, weather-resistant designs, large coverage areas, and support for variable power sources (e.g., solar power, rechargeable) could be integrated into a new, attractive, functional and cost-effective packaged device. In addition, the team learned that while there were some new entrants in this category, the majority lacked strong brand recognition & awareness outside of select home markets.
Results: Strategically aligned IP portfolio to emerging business direction. The senior IP counsel was able to evaluate a shortlist of patents related to IP barriers and freedom to operate, saving significant time and effort in assessing potential legal risks. The R&D director improved the speed of solution discovery in a technology white space, and also expanded novel contributions to the client’s IP portfolio development. With legal risks reduced, opportunities for protected revenue streams from a new branded outdoor pest control device were greatly enhanced in the near term.