Rarely has a conversation passed by at INTA so far this year without the topic of big data coming up. The term of course has been around for a long while now, and has caused some controversy in terms of its commercial value and application. Some have said, for instance, that big data is the new ‘oil’ and those who have access to it will be the real drivers in the global economy. Sceptics claim that its potential has been overhyped and various regulatory measures (particularly from Europe) make deriving meaningful insight from aggregated numbers a real challenge.
Jayne Durden, Senior Vice President Strategy, Law Firms, at CPA Global moderated a panel discussion as part of yesterday’s schedule at INTA on just this topic, and there were some clear takeaways:
- Big data doesn’t mean having a big database – it’s about the intelligent use of large volumes of data.
- To unleash big data’s full potential sophisticated technological processes must be in place to ensure precise and meaningful data analysis.
- AI has the potential to transform how we use big data and create incredibly powerful tools, but too often AI is used as a marketing buzzword rather than a genuine technological offering.
We at CPA Global believe that data has the potential to be a powerful asset when it comes to IP management, and that potential can be effectively harnessed through the application of technological based solutions that take data points and transform them into real business intelligence which can be actioned.
For example, our Innography solution brings together thousands of sources and utilizes smart algorithms and machine learning to ensure that the data is not only up to date at any given moment (over 200,000 updates are applied each month) but that users can easily analyze and derive insight from the information. This can, for instance, enable a birds-eye-view of trademark and patent filings in a given market in a particular jurisdiction, knowledge of which can provide real competitive advantage when making decisions regarding both investment and broader IP strategies. Success in the world of IP, as anyone at INTA will tell you, is about competition – ensuring that innovation is keeping you ahead of the game – and big data can be a powerful part of the toolkit for maintaining relevance, mitigating threats and spotting opportunities.
This latter point is particularly key for us, and is one of the reasons why, back in 2017, we partnered with the Google Public Data project to make trademark and patent data far more accessible (and usable) in an effort to broaden understanding and help to drive innovation.
There is more work to do in this regard, however. The IP industry – including corporate innovators, legal advisers, and service providers – are still getting to grips with big data, and how it is gathered, stored and deployed will continue to drive debate. We’re certainly looking forward to continuing the debate here at INTA.
By Melanie Fitzpatrick, Chief People & Marketing Officer at CPA Global
If you are attending INTA this week, make sure to come along to the session or visit the team at stand 501.
All law firms visiting the stand can benefit from a complementary Filing Analytics report, which brings together billions of global filing data points on client lists, filing trends, agent networks and reciprocity, making it easier to discover business opportunities that will transform and grow your law firm.