Royal Philips is a leading health technology company focused on improving people’s health and well-being through meaningful innovation. Philips’ patient- and people-centric innovation leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver personal health solutions.
To manage their extensive IP portfolio, Philips has a robust Intellectual Property & Standards (IP&S) organization. The organization’s IP Support group, led by Poul de Haan, handles all the administrative tasks associated with filing, prosecuting and maintaining the company’s IP rights.
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The Challenge: Growing complexity and scale
Given the sheer size and global nature of Philips’ IP portfolio, the role of De Haan’s IP Support team is complex.
“Typically Philips files about 900 new patent filings per year. Next to that Philips is also quite active in registering new design rights and trademarks. All the formalities in relation to filing and prosecution are handled by the IP Support group.” de Haan explains.
The Solution: Unified IP lifecycle management
In 2008, Philips turned to ipan, now part of Clarivate™, to handle renewals. Since then, the relationship has expanded to include European Patent (EP) validations and IP recordals. In 2011, following a review of available IP management software (IPMS), Philips adopted Unycom™. Unycom offers comprehensive tools for managing the entire IP lifecycle. The system provides best-practice workflows and seamless integration of internal and external stakeholders to enable efficient collaboration. Plus, it supports easy integration of incoming IP data and documents from PTOs or IP portfolio migrations.
“The combination of [IP services and software] in one company is a real benefit. Clarivate has proven to be a trustworthy and long-term partner.”
Results: More efficiency, less friction
- Time saving automation
“We have a lot of different document classifications. When uploading a document, we can specify the correct classification and Unycom automatically creates the associated task and timing within the system. That automation is a big help.”
- Seamless communication
Since the introduction of Unycom, the team uses the Unycom partner portal to streamline communicating instructions to their network of agents worldwide.
- Relief from renewals
Relying on Clarivate for renewals and annuity payments has helped De Haan’s team maintain Philips’ rights while taking a major burden off the shoulders of in-house IP support staff.
- Tackling large recordal projects
“We worked with Clarivate to get all ownership changes recorded at the various PTOs,” he says. “If we had tried to do it in-house, I don’t think we would have had the capacity to get it all done.”
- The benefit of a single partner
“The combination of [IP services and software] in one company is a real benefit. Clarivate has proven to be a trustworthy and long-term partner.”
- Streamlining patent validation
Philips also relies on Clarivate for patent validations, having established a smooth workflow integrated with their IPMS.
Read the full customer story here.
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