Decision-maker feature explained

Understanding IP law firm’s filing strategies and behavior with IP Pilot’s unique algorithm and decision-maker feature

To serve their clients best and meet the business development needs, IP law firms must strategically build a network of international partners.

In this respect, it is crucial to understand how clients and potential partners behave. The behavior can vary greatly. Some IP law firms might be interested in building balanced case-exchange relations with representatives abroad, while others might not.

At the same time, the behavior itself might not accurately reflect the firm’s strategy and can be influenced by the preferences of prominent clients. To understand the behavior of the potential partner in the market, it is critical to discard the cases for which the applicant was the decision-maker behind the international case exchange. Under these circumstances, the IP law firms did not exchange the work among each other directly.

Unfortunately, the raw patent data do not show whether a law firm or an applicant is in charge of the decision.

To address this issue, IP Pilot built a unique algorithm that can predict who is the decision-maker.

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The application of the decision-maker algorithm explained: Example of Qualcomm.

The algorithm allows to get rid of “noise” – cases where the clients were in charge of a decision –and to figure out the actual behavior of the potential partners.

Let us take the American multinational corporation Qualcomm as an example and demonstrate how the algorithm works in determining the real decision-maker behind the case flow.

Qualcomm is among the largest patent filers worldwide. It issued roughly 167,503 patent applications between 2010 and 2020, with about 16,732 sent to Europe. On the surface, prominent corporations have the power to decide to which foreign representatives the application should be forwarded. In this respect, Qualcomm is selected to clearly describe how the algorithm distills the decision-maker-related information.

The Outbound Case Flow chart below demonstrates the case flow from Qualcomm to the first filing firms in the United States (central column) and the IP law firms taking over the work in Europe, representing subsequent EP filings (right column).

Qualcomm Case Exchange_IP Pilot_Decision-Maker Algorithm

The picture shows the pattern and visualizes how the Patent-Pilot algorithm can understand whether Qualcomm or the US IP law firms are in charge of the case flow decisions.

Indeed, a high number of American firms simultaneously appear to have connections to the same European patent firms. For example, HOLLAND & HART LLP, ARENT FOX LLP, and SHUMAKER & SIEFFERT, P.A., all seem to prefer to work with the same European firms. This includes German BARDEHLE PAGENBERG PARTNERSCHAFT MBB, British MAUCHER JENKINS and REDDIE & GROSE.

In this scenario, the probability is extremely high that Qualcomm instructs American IP law firms to send cases to its preferred partner in Europe (or directly sends the work to the EP representatives).

The Patent-Pilot algorithm predicts that in 100% of cases, Qualcomm is a decision-maker behind the case flow. Indeed, if American IP law firms were not bound by the applicant in their choice of the European partners, they would not be prone to choose the same firms as other representatives of Qualcomm’s priority filings. They would rather send the cases to the firms of their own partner network.

All in all, irrespective of the IP law firm’s business development strategy and approach, it is always important to clearly understand how its potential clients and partners behave. To see the true international filing strategy of the potential partner, it is, therefore, crucial to discern the decision-maker behind the case flow. Decision-maker information is not available anywhere in the patent raw data. In this regard, Patent-Pilot’s algorithm and decision-maker feature are of a high value for the IP law firms as it allows to see the behavior and find the right partner IP law firms.

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