Due Diligence for a (Rush) Micronized Biopolymer Manufacturer Acquisition
The Chief IP Counsel of an industrial products manufacturer sought IP due diligence expertise to improve M&A decision-making. They faced a short deadline to express interest in a micronized biopolymer company acquisition, with a near-$1 billion minimum bid required.
Growing into eco-friendly alternatives. Micronized biopolymers provide eco-friendly alternatives to using microplastics. Micronized biopolymers have applications in consumer, industrial and pharmaceutical products. Our clients on the legal team were supporting the corporate development function to evaluate risks related to candidate R&D, technology operations, and IP portfolio quality.
Identifying seminal candidate IP. The legal team requested a micronized biopolymer IP & technology landscape analysis in our Intellar dashboards that visualized the candidate portfolio as mapped against customer, supplier, partner and regulator competitive IP intelligence. The landscape dataset was expertly curated, categorized and patent-quality-scored. The result surfaced seminal IP, key citing parties, material collaborations, alliance participation and strong supplier/regulator influences.
Seeking post-acquisition growth and risks. New markets (for the candidate IP) with higher value were mined from category trends in the landscape, and were prioritized to assess where further growth could occur if the acquisition closed with our client. To assess risks, IP workarounds to the candidate IP were surfaced/contemplated at a high level. Relevant workaround references or concepts were found to be those that achieved comparable biodegradability and sustainability attributes, and were associated with large players, litigious entities, hot startups and out-licensing research institutions.
Dealing with the dealroom. The chief IP counsel and team gained a rapid understanding of where foundational IP protection existed for the candidate in its current market, as well as understanding of potential new market overlaps. Our expert IP landscaping, patent mapping and insight development enabled the legal team to populate a rapidly evolving online dealroom with the due diligence required to support a corporate development decision.
Results: Making a “no-go" decision confidently. Ultimately the deal did not occur. We were among those on the team showing that: the IP was likely only partially protected with growing workarounds identified; a high relative R&D expense was expected to maintain and grow from that starting point; and the largest part of the technology value was with a very large customer that could potentially compete with their own IP or improvements if so motivated.
Empowering Outside IP Counsel for Medical Device Competitive Awareness & Partnering
Perception Partners assisted an international IP law firm to systematically inform their client’s counsel on key players & IP for unmet needs in ablation therapy leading medical devices.
Challenge: Monitoring known and emerging market players for freedom-to-operate (FTO) risks and IP development opportunities related to ablation therapy devices. Partnering is ongoing in this part of the industry, and IP positions of the client, competitors and research ecosystem need constant review.
Organizing a trusted IP landscape dataset. Patents, applications, news, scientific literature and trials were gathered into an IP landscape dataset and visualized within our secure cloud-based Intellar dashboards platform. This extensive collection of thousands of global documents underwent expert curation and categorization to match a taxonomy sketched out by the counsel team and extended by ours. To ease the workload, a focus was also placed on identifying and highlighting records of highest relevance.
Accelerating patent risk awareness over time. The ablation devices IP landscape that we developed was maintained and updated over a 3-year period. This structured approach allowed members of the IP counsel team to engage in ongoing awareness, inform client meetings, capture emerging regulatory news, and proactively address emerging IP risks. Over this time period we systematically reviewed references, identified relevant claims and highlighted mentions of critical business & clinical milestones – while tagging these items in the landscape dashboards for closer legal review.
Results: Counsel stays on top of breaking information and ahead of competitive moves. Reliance on a trusted and precise IP landscape with systematic online updates helped counsel and their client watch competitive innovation, patenting, trials and approvals in a professional and systematic manner for long-term value creation in life-saving medical devices.
Helping a Consulting Firm Advise on Valuable Growth Opportunities in Functional Ingredients
We assisting an innovation strategy consulting firm to prioritize protected, high-value new market opportunities for a global foods leader.
Challenge: Supporting a market research team with trusted competitive intelligence. This consulting firm was exploring growth opportunities on behalf of a global foods leader. Their preliminary market research had identified potential growth trends related to five classes of healthy functional food ingredients.
Incorporating IP strategic views. The consulting firm was in search of a third-party partner to complement and extend their existing primary and secondary research with trusted IP analysis. Perception Partners was engaged for IP landscaping and IP expert assessment of trends for each of the five functional ingredient classes.
Gathering the proper references. Using our Intellar dashboards platform, we built an IP landscape of all global patents, applications & news associated with the names and brands of ten curated global organizations. This approach allowed us to capture the complete direction and momentum of each of the most relevant industry players as related to the functional ingredient classes of interest.
AI mining of curated IP to find true growth opportunities. To surface the highest-impact and most-protected growth indicators, the IP landscape data was expertly curated, algorithmically categorized and IP-quality-scored by functional ingredient class. Then that rich metadata was exported from our Intellar platform and fed into a private enterprise instance of GPT4. Expert prompting was developed to enable the model to perform technology adjacency analysis on the metadata. AI answers identified new and emerging technology capabilities from the ten leaders that would be associated with healthy nutrition, sustainability and other unmet needs now or in the future. AI answers to be shared were then expertly fact-checked and tested for hallucinations by our experts. Vetted results were formatted into a report with slides, then shared with the consulting team.
Results: Expedited and validated leads for new growth. Our landscape analytics and AI answers were expertly discussed and explored with the full consulting firm team via virtual workshops. The consultants then incorporated quantified and vetted emerging growth opportunities (as learned from the leaders’ IP) into final deliverables. The consultants were able to effectively communicate more than a dozen specific functional ingredient opportunities to their global foods client, each with potential billion-dollar-plus implications post-launch.
From Indoor Success to Outdoor Innovation with IP
A senior intellectual property (IP) counsel and R&D director from a multinational consumer products manufacturer approached Perception Partners with the intention of expanding into outdoor pest control.
Challenge: Motivated by competitive market expansion & strong brand recognition, the client team sought insights related to outdoor pest control devices. The requirements included identifying market leading offerings, assessing competitive product IP strengths, uncovering unprotected technology gaps and evaluating third party solutions to unmet needs. The project was performed under leadership of senior IP counsel, to maintain legal privilege.
Navigating an established market by finding white spaces. Outdoor pest control, despite being well-established and mature, is constantly evolving with opportunities for innovation as pests develop resistance or aversion to prior solutions. Novel ways to attract, repel, trap and kill pests can create new market spaces with new revenue streams.
Identifying technical solutions in the IP landscape. The client team aimed to improve device-based solutions from other markets to accelerate protected market entry in this case. Through an IP landscape analysis focused on outdoor pest control, we curated patents, applications, literature and news records to be shared and visualized through our cloud-based Intellar dashboards. In particular, detailed global patent full text was categorized, tagged and commented to escalate IP opportunities and risks to the attention of the team.
Building consensus for actionable insights. A full-day onsite workshop was conducted with the team. We presented six key inventive schemes discovered from live dashboards review. Group discussion of the real-time filtered data in each scheme built consensus that outdoor insect control devices to automatically dispense safe pesticides at timed intervals were lacking in the market. The discussion further built confidence that programmable dispensing, weather-resistant designs, large coverage areas, and support for variable power sources (e.g., solar power, rechargeable) could be integrated into a new, attractive, functional and cost-effective packaged device. In addition, the team learned that while there were some new entrants in this category, the majority lacked strong brand recognition & awareness outside of select home markets.
Results: Strategically aligned IP portfolio to emerging business direction. The senior IP counsel was able to evaluate a shortlist of patents related to IP barriers and freedom to operate, saving significant time and effort in assessing potential legal risks. The R&D director improved the speed of solution discovery in a technology white space, and also expanded novel contributions to the client’s IP portfolio development. With legal risks reduced, opportunities for protected revenue streams from a new branded outdoor pest control device were greatly enhanced in the near term.
Evaluating Building Products Freedom to Operate with IP Landscaping
A research and development (R&D) director and in-house IP attorney of a building materials company approached Perception Partners to inform new product development decision-making.
Challenges: The company was venturing into a new line of fiberglass insulation boards but lacked expertise in component design and assembly. They sought to include their unique phase change materials into fiberglass insulation boards with high impact and fire resistance. We were presented with early prototypes from the R&D team to inform searching. The IP attorney was primarily concerned with freedom to operate (FTO) issues, particularly those posed by litigious competitors also expanding from the advanced materials sector.
Quantifying boundaries in the IP landscape. Intellectual property (IP) landscaping is a valuable approach to uncovering diverse innovative opportunities and risks. For this building products IP landscape (delivered via our Intellar dashboards), a curated set of patents, applications, literature & news was cleaned, categorized & summarized to provide concise evidence of customer trends & competitive barriers related to protected designs, alternative uses of materials and popular manufacturing solutions.
Pinpointing IP alternatives. The innovation & patent leaders in this space were found to be insulation board manufacturers and multi-national building materials suppliers, with very few start-ups. Key players focused on pre-assembled modular structures, fire-resistant formulations and vacuum insulation panels.
Mitigating risks and maximizing value with teamwork. We led a half-day interactive workshop with the R&D and legal team to discuss inventive schemes (ways to solve the same problem) and supporting IP as learned from the landscape. Insights were shared about protected material innovations, alternative designs and novel pre-assembly and onsite assembly options.
Results: Confidence, inspirations, workarounds. By the conclusion of the workshop, the team had more confidence in their own designs with much more detailed understanding of granted patents and pending applications from known players and emergent leaders. IP counsel had a shortlist of patents and claims to evaluate for further FTO risks. Ultimately, this work led to the combined team identifying areas requiring improvements as well as potential workarounds to avoid infringement as their new products experienced uptake in the market.
Competitive Monitoring in Sustainable Food Packaging
A senior packaging engineering team of a multi-national company collaborated with Perception Partners to discover and monitor technologies offering eco-friendly alternatives to traditional food & beverage packaging.
Challenges: Watching a diverse array of global sources for disruptive innovation, organizing competitive intelligence for executive communications, and effectively delivering insights across a geographically dispersed group of leaders.
A customized package of insights. Perception Partners developed expert curation and AI categorization approaches to consolidate a precise range of business, technical, and intellectual property (IP) information including competitor news, conference proceedings, trade show announcements, coalition releases, government policies, academic research, funding details, and patents. The resulting information was organized, visualized and summarized for at-a-glance alerting. Discussions with the team revealed that the best way to distribute the results was to provide them monthly via Intellar dashboards for the technologists on the team, as well as in a paginated report easily accessible to executives as an emailed PDF.
Getting everyone on board. Our client leader received previews of results ahead of the team each month. He analyzed the latest information, gaining valuable insights into market demands, competitor activities, and innovations in bio-sourced materials. We then refined results as needed based on his guidance, and thereafter distributed the dashboards and PDF report more broadly for full team review.
Staying alert & well-informed. Regular monthly updates with client feedback continues in this area. The uniquely connected & curated results systematically enhance team awareness of customer preferences, product launches, industry collaborations and emerging regulatory requirements across the world. In some cases the team is learning of potential risks and discovering the need for timely adjustments to technical strategies and R&D resources.
Results: Well positioned with better data-driven decisions. With our assistance and reporting, the senior packaging engineering team has aligned more of their R&D efforts with actionable corporate sustainability goals, and is more efficiently directing resources toward materials & methods that ensure improved food safety and extended product shelf life.