Growing a Patent Portfolio: Case Study
The Problem
More than ten years ago, a relatively new and dynamic business located in the Muskoka Region of Ontario decided to take on a bold and daring plan.
The company’s main service was infrastructure rehabilitation and maintenance, but they ran into a significant and continual problem, namely that their competitors had been blocking our client out of the market by restricting certain patented technologies.
Our client couldn’t access those patented technologies to help their customers when it came to rehabilitating underground water pipes.
Our client’s competitors had patented certain technologies that, up until that time, were considered industry standards.
Our client’s chief executive officer (CEO) was determined to change that.
The Solution
The CEO envisioned rather than be blocked out of certain markets by competitor patents, that instead our client would develop its own patented and branded technologies.
Part of the vision included building a nearly self-sustaining intellectual property portfolio that would continue to flourish and thereby give the company ongoing and constant protection regardless of the individual intellectual property components in that portfolio.
In spite of having a very small development team, the CEO educated his team about his goals, and they set to work.
We were not only part of that team, but our client also took advantage of our exclusive In-House Program (IHP) thereby saving thousands of dollars every year in avoidable expenses.
The Outcome
Over the course of more than a decade, we helped our client amass a significant intellectual property portfolio that included patent cooperation treaty applications and patent grants in Canada, the United States of America, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, and throughout the European Union.
Our client also amassed an impressive array of trademark registrations in those same regions, thus protecting their brand across three of seven continents.
Putting aside their patent grants and registrations, they also wound up developing a series of trade secrets that became protected throughout the company, as well as various proprietary industrial designs for equipment.
Building their portfolio to this level resulted in our client not just carving out their own exclusive commercial niche within their market, but also ultimately being acquired and relocated to the southern United States of America.
The CEO’s vision regarding intellectual property came to fruition, our client saved many tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a decade, and we were proud to work with our client every step along the way.
Contact Pnc IP Group today to learn more about our Patent services.