Free and Low Cost Patent Search and Analysis Tools: Who Needs Expensive Name Brand Products? by Jackie Hutter.
From the post:
In private conversations, some of my corporate peers inform me that they pay $1000′s per year (or even per quarter for larger companies) for access to “name brand” patent search tools that nonetheless do not contain accurate and up to date information. For example, a client tells me that one of these expensive tools fails to update USPTO records on a portfolio her company is monitoring and that the PAIR data is more than 1 year out of date. This limits the effectiveness of the expensive database by requiring her IP support staff to check each individual record on a regular basis to update the data. Of course, this limitation defeats the purpose of spending the big bucks to engage with a “name brand” search tool.
Certainly, one need not have sympathy for corporate IP professionals who manage large department budgets–if they spend needlessly on “name brand” tools and staff to manage the quality of such tools, so be it. But most companies with IP strategy needs do not have money and staff to purchase such tools, let alone to fix the errors in the datasets obtained from them. Others might wish not to waste their department budgets on worthless tools. To this end, over the last 5 years, I have used a number of free and low cost tools in my IP strategy practice. I use all of these tools on a regular basis and have personally validated the quality and validity of each one for my practice.
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Jackie makes two cases:
First, there are free tools that perform as well or better than commercial patent tools. A link is offered to a list of them.
Second, and more importantly from my perspective, is the low cost tools leave a lot to be desired in terms of UI and usability.
Certainly enough room for an “inexpensive” but better than commercial-grade patent search service to establish a market.
Or perhaps a more expensive “challenge” tool that warns subscribers about patents close to theirs.
I first saw this in a tweet by Lutz Maicher.