Case Studies

Have you ever heard of – hiding in plain sight? How often does one skip the details because they look pretty obvious? But, a more important question, why am I asking these questions? I [...]

“A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” -Duke Ellington For my team, this case was a chance to brainstorm the best strategies to monetize patents when there is no infringement. How did [...]

For a researcher, prior-art searching means following a set of patterns and ending with a bang-on result. Finding a bang-on result for every case is not easy. From the beginning of my career as a [...]

“… Intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience”, Einstein said. Ideas are just a mash-up of already existing information. And what if I tell you with that logic, [...]

According to reports, it takes ~10 years and $2.6 Billion for a new drug to complete its journey from initial discovery to its market launch. Given the timeline and the resources at stake, you [...]

Have you ever faced a situation where you are trying to invalidate a formulation patent and end up not having even a single prior art disclosing the exact same proportions of ingredients? Despite [...]

As a searcher, each of us has an array of tactics and strategies at our disposal. Implementing the right tactic at the right resource could open doors to the prior art which you thought might not [...]

Imagine this – You have a patent to invalidate. What are the possible search avenues you will explore to ensure a comprehensive search such that no prior art is missed? If you’re a [...]

In the practical world, circumstances are not always in our favor. Sometimes, indeed, we don’t have suitable weapons to fight the battle. On the contrary, the opponent’s counterattack is so [...]

As a litigator, you love killer prior art, don’t you? A perfect Tier-I reference(s) would make life so easy and court proceedings bliss. But what if killer prior art does not exist?  The next [...]

I have been with GreyB for over two years now. I have worked on multiple cases, yet every new case brings with it the same enthusiasm and thrill – something I love about the IP industry. That is [...]

Jim, a Patent attorney, with years of experience in litigation, asked during a handshake meeting with my team — “what do you suck at?”.  In a confident voice, I said, turnaround time. It is [...]

Imagine this – A leading smartphone player comes to you with a litigation-grade search project for a smartphone-related patent. If the fact that this patent was in litigation does not sound [...]

If you’re a seasoned innovator (or senior patent counsel), you would agree with me when I say that – One of the quickest ways to generate income from your patents is to sell them. Immediate [...]

“Gamers are the most passionate people in the world and it’s painful when you make them unhappy”. Jack Tretton, President, and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America (2013) We have to agree [...]

Has this ever happened to you during a litigation grade search that you found prior art in complaint documents? Yes, those very documents which in a previous infringement lawsuit was used to [...]

How do we identify infringing products? What is that one strategy that makes GreyB different? Chakshu, director at GreyB, wanted to prepare a list of all strategies we use to identify infringing [...]

Finding prior art for a patent that has a mathematical expression or a complex equation in its claim is hard. If you have worked on such cases before, you would know it is not like another [...]

Ever wondered why you are not able to license or sell your patents despite them being of high value?   Often, I come across licensing managers, IP heads and patent owners confused as to why they [...]

As a litigator, you love killer prior art,  don’t you? But sometimes you have to make do with 103-type if you are in the US. The sound of 103-type just made you sigh, didn’t it? It is justified [...]

“Our group would like to proceed with the initial search outlined to identify companies who could be infringing U.S. Patent No. XXXX971”,  emailed Chris – Partner in a proclaimed law firm and a [...]

Patent attorneys are often in a zero-sum game when it comes to litigation. Wins are attributed to how strong the prior art is with the attorney. My job is to find this prior art. Most patent [...]

Patent litigation is greatly influenced by having an expert witness on your side. These expert witnesses provide testimony for infringement, validity, damages, etc.  As a patent litigator, you [...]

Has this ever happened to you – You are conducting a prior-art search and something keeps on jabbing at the back of your head, questioning whether you have explored everything?  Well, it happens [...]

After hearing the word patent infringement, the first thing that comes to most analysts’ minds is finding product literature and mapping it with the patent. What comes to our mind, on the [...]

“My client wants a fresh search on a patent about LED substrates” emailed an attorney – our repeat client – on a Friday. “Of course, we can help you as this is relatable technology”, [...]

“I don’t know what else I can tell you, it seems nothing good exists,” said the attorney on a conference call. This conversation took place during one of the interim connects in the project [...]

With every project comes a challenge, and with every challenge that we overcome a milestone is set. Most of you would relate to this – some when they push their limits at the gym, others when [...]

We all know the power a strong patent portfolio holds. However, when it comes to monetizing it, it’s not always a walk in the park. A list of target companies needs to be generated, infringement [...]

Results found. No results found – Searches, in my opinion, have more to it than the outcome. As a searcher, of course, there are strategies and tactics involved to get to the result (or the lack [...]

While preparing a methodology for the projects, especially for a claim amendment study, deciding what to include and what not can take an extra bit of thinking. The client might have made his [...]

Intelligence today is about using the collective knowledge of the organisation to reach an advantageous position in industry” ~~ Stevan Dedijer, the Father of Business Intelligence Walmart [...]

When it comes to prior art searches, among the huge list of resources and strategies explored and employed during the search, searchers generally tend to give a low priority to already cited [...]

In our years of performing invalidation searches, there were often occasions when we found inspiration for prior art from the environment around us. There are way too many to link each of them, [...]

Around 2017, we heard from an inventor who’d grown dissatisfied with the IP research firm he’d been working with. He owned a patent dating to 2005 that had to do with the automated conversion of [...]

Recently, one of our client contacted us with a project which required a Reverse Engineering based infringement analysis of cutting edge tech. This article discusses how we went about the RE and [...]

A few years ago, as part of an ongoing relationship with a major U.S. defense contractor, we were asked to run a monetization analysis on a large patent portfolio, with an eye toward identifying [...]

“What you don’t know, you don’t know.” ~Jonathan Raymond How would you know about a startup or a new player about which there is too little or nothing written on the internet? It won’t [...]

Did you know that an OLED is 200 times thinner than a strand of a human hair? The thickness of a strand of human hair is approximately 30 to 100 micrometers while that of an OLED is 100 to 500 [...]

In the US, while presenting a piece of non-patent literature (NPL) as a valid prior art, the litigators have to overcome challenges of proving that the NPL was publicly accessible and that the [...]

Old times were simple.  There was a plaintiff, who tried to sue a company, and then the company asked us to find some good prior art. We logged in to simple patent databases, many of which were [...]

In 2016, a major Chinese smartphone manufacturer came to us with a problem. The company was being sued by a competitor, also based in China, for patent infringement, and they would soon have to [...]

In 2017, we were approached by an attorney representing a large manufacturer of digital and analog computer chips that we’ll call Chip and Dale Corp. The company had recently been contacted by [...]

Patent infringement has become a lot common in the past couple of decades. With increased interconnectivity among technologies and the existence of thousands of patents covering them, it has [...]

How difficult is it to find a solution to a problem you know nothing about? Difficult? Very difficult? Preposterous, you say? No, we are not being ludicrous. Though less often, there are [...]

Last week, in a call with Mr. Chang – research executive at the R&D of a huge chemical firm in China, we gave away the credentials of a magical wand we had. And Northstar got a chance [...]

The patent set was already exhausted. Searching on standards for hours started feeling like inside of a spiral that keeps tightening as you go down. In between, some references emerged undeniable [...]

Not all prior art searches are run equally. Some are complex, some are easy, and some test your temperament by pushing you to the dark abyss of self-doubt where you question your abilities and [...]

After a long and hard day at work, I like to come home to a steaming cup of coffee, with toasted marshmallows on top, chocolate chip cookies on the side and some entertainment source to get my [...]

“Not today!” – I groaned as I woke up and saw the clock beside my bedside. It was 8:15 AM already and I had only 45 minutes to get to the office. I couldn’t afford to get late as I had a client [...]

Boeing’s Dreamliner 787, which Boeing advertised as 20% fuel efficient, was grounded in 2013. In the same year, Tesla’s Model S came under a federal safety investigation after it caught fire at [...]

How great would it be if the energy released could be stored or used just after applying brakes! Time for a high-five. The solution is named – Regenerative Brakes, an energy recovering [...]

Drones fascinate me. They are wonderful tools of entertainment and transportation and has so much potential, which, if fully explored can change the way mankind transports. Technology companies [...]

I was leaning in my chair while watching those bees through the steam of my coffee. They were four in number, flying from one plant to another, from one flower to next, collecting the sugary [...]

Prior art can be found in a lot of places. Some conventional, others unimaginable yet a valid source of prior art – the unconventional one. As analysts, we are tuned to exhaust the conventional [...]

Understanding the objective of the client goes a long way in customer satisfaction and retention. At GreyB, we are huge believers in fulfilling the objective of the client – rather than [...]

Invalidating patents is hard. Invalidating a standard-essential patent (SEPs) is even harder. SEPs claim technical solutions that are part of industry standards. Needless to say, they are much [...]

We find prior art in a lot of unconventional places. Sitcoms, Pop culture magazines, FCC ID databases, Internet archives – Well, almost every place where you would least think of finding prior [...]

I’m a self-confessed fan of sitcoms and movies. A binge-watcher by nature, I often spend weekends endlessly staring at my laptop screen, with munchies on my side, so that I don’t have to hit [...]

Click to read this article in Chinese 🇨🇳 What exactly is the objective of an invalidation search? That’s an easy question. Of course, it is to find a result – one that discloses [...]

In this instance, North Star helped the research department at a moderate level electronics company in Germany.  And the mystery we helped them resolve was of Li-Fi. A powerful and complementary [...]

Prior art search is a big part of the work we do. When we started, we were convinced that prior art searches should never be run with a set framework where only the following few defined steps [...]

Invalidation searches are not a cakewalk. That’s why a lot of time many prior art search service providers or your in-house team fail to return with a result you needed. Weak results or no [...]

You will agree when I say it’s not always the hard work that leads you to success. Experience plays its sweet role by equipping you with abilities to make decisions that optimize and [...]

“Searching prior art is not a process, it is an art.” In my 6 years of experience, I have been a part of ~250 patent invalidation processes. If it has taught me anything, it is that there are [...]

One of the major challenges faced by a patent licensing manager is to find and prove evidence of an infringement. Not so strong evidence of the use chart can become a standalone factor for the [...]

Every day, as we take a step at making our life more digital, we facilitate digitization of our knowledge. Hundreds of documents, on a regular basis, are getting scanned, listed, indexed and made [...]

Time and again, the prior art searches we conduct teach us new lessons. These lessons not only help us add new rules to our little black book of prior art searching but also point us to the true [...]

I love patent search, not because I’ve expertise in the area or I find them easy to conduct, but because it helps me to make my contribution in making the patent world unambiguous. I get an [...]

We work on a lot of IP commercialization projects. If you ask, what is our motto when we are working on such projects, we would say: “At GreyB, we are committed to help our clients monetize their [...]

OBJECTIVE The patent under study was related to a cigarette filter having gas adsorbing material and certain specific composition requirements. Our objective was to invalidate the patent [...]

We received a request from a client to invalidate a patent that is related to the concept of a random access procedure. More specifically, the patent was talking about a specific equation. [...]

OBJECTIVE The patent that we received from the client was related to Wireless communication and covered the process for handling lower priority communication traffic. STORY This time, we thought [...]

OBJECTIVE:  We had to invalidate a patent related to an audio player that had one important feature. Also, the client wanted to make his position stronger in the Inter Partes Review. STORY: This [...]