When I explain how InnVenn democratizes the patenting process by making it easier and less expensive to inventors, they are just as excited as I am. But, what I want to say is there’s so much more that it can do for inventors. The true power of InnVenn will reveal itself when the innovation marketplace flourishes with data and reveals the gaps between existing products and undiscovered opportunities, which we refer to as the whitespace.
By combining the power of data visualization, in this case a Venn Diagram, with the aggregate of global patenting data gathered via contextual searching, predictive analytics, machine learning, heuristics, Bayesian statistics, and user input, the true power of the system will reveal itself in the whitespace of a Venn Diagram, as seen below.
A Venn Diagram is the perfect data visualization tool in this case because multiple data sets, or the terms used to discover whether your idea already exists, can be visually displayed in a way that helps inventors understand:
- Whether their idea already exists
- How many ideas ideas exist related their idea related to the search terms used
- The bare landscape, or whitespace, where there is opportunity for new ideas
The whitespace is what I’d like to focus on in this post because not only is InnVenn revolutionary in terms of reducing cost and time for inventors, it uniquely helps to reveal where there’s opportunity to create new ideas. And, I can’t stress this enough — there is no tool like this that exists today.
With InnVenn, inventors can now see and understand, for example, if a similar idea for a product already exists, and how they need to pivot their idea to be truly unique and thus, patentable. Gone are the days of needing to hire expensive IP lawyers to litigate when someone’s idea encroaches upon yours.
Now, where it really gets interesting for inventors using InnVenn is a result of our decision to build it all atop the blockchain. When an inventor states their concept for an idea, inventors can save their search and concept, which is then recorded on the blockchain, which initiates the 12-month grace period for filing a patent. It has the effect of moving the inventor closer to an application and assisting a patent attorney by providing a starting point for understanding and a prior art search.
Publicly disclosing with sufficient specificity also locks out others from the invention. This sets the time, in several but certainly not all countries, for the start of that one-year window for filing a non-provisional patent application without loss of rights.
It’s this aspect of InnVenn that really excites me. The technology and the platform itself democratize the patenting process and help to reveal the whitespace, or the vast opportunities that exist. By removing these barriers, it’s sure to help anyone ideate, search and patent new, novel ideas. What will you invent?
