What are Standards or Evidence of Use Studies?

Patent owners often wonder how valuable their patents are.

One method to identify the potential value of a patent is through patent-to-Standards claims mapping. This method asks Researchers to determine whether a patent applies to or covers any existing or proposed technical Standards. For a patent-to-Standards claims mapping, Researchers are asked to map each element of an independent patent claim to a technical Standard specification.

Another method is Evidence-of-Use or patent-to-product claims mapping. In this method, Researchers look for any products, systems, or services on the market that make use of the invention claimed in the patent, i.e., have product features that match all the elements of at least one independent claim of the patent. Once a Researcher identifies a product or service, they map each element of an independent patent claim to a corresponding feature of the product or service.

Standards and Evidence of Use Studies request Researchers to map or match the independent claims of a patent to either a known Standard (Standards Study) or to an existing product (Evidence of Use Study).