Patent Search: Competitors and Own Company
Objective: Determining the patent position of your own company in relation to the competition. Building a patent portfolio using espacenet.
Research: A comprehensive patent database is provided by the EPO at https://worldwide.espacenet.com/. This database is also free of charge. There, activate the "Advanced Search" switch, enter the name of the competitor in the search field "Applicant," and receive a list of all patents where the entered name is used. If the selected competitor has not registered any patents so far, choose a company that offers a similar product. Large corporations are not suitable at the beginning, as they usually have many patents registered for a wide variety of products. Reducing the search results to the relevant patents requires additional filters and a lot of effort.
It may be necessary to adjust the name (spelling, name additions, etc.). Activate the "Filter" switch. The list of found patents will be analyzed based on various aspects. By clicking on the three dots, the statistics contained in the filter can be downloaded as an Excel file. In the "Applicant" tab, the different spellings of the applicant are listed. The list can also show whether other companies have contributed to the invention (joint patents). If necessary, additional spellings can be entered in the "Applicant" search field using the "OR" connection. You can also exclude applicants by adding another group (link "NOT").
For ongoing business, only patents that can still have legal effect are of interest. Patents can have a maximum term of 20 years. Therefore, we also add the field "Publication Date" to the field "Applicant" and only consider the last 20 years. Note: There is usually an 18-month gap between the filing of a patent at a patent office and the publication of the patent application.
The patents of the own company are to be determined in the same way.
Result: A list of patents published by the own company and the considered competitors in the last 20 years. Statement on the number of patent applications, patent applications vs. time (patent activity), and comparison of patent activities of the considered companies.