Mapping of Patent Claims
Patent claims mapping is a legal and technical method which is used to support critical business decisions. It is about clearly linking a patent and one or more of the claims of that patent to a specific product or a specific component, part, feature or function within that product. Patent product mapping is frequently used to map your patents to your products, to evaluate the level of alignment here, and to help identify the most important patents in your portfolio and the protection they provide to the products in the product offering. Mapping also occurs during the patent prosecution phase to establish which claims should to be taken forward, and which claims not.
This blog looks at the rationale for patent product mapping, the challenges trying to conduct it and some of the approaches and techniques one can employ in order to succeed.
