Scottsdale’s Global Patent Solutions grows with tech market

If you have a wild idea, you may want to slap a patent on it so no one can steal what you have in mind. Before you get the innovations going, it may help to double-check to see if someone else as creative as you has already come up with the same idea. You can do this by performing a patent search. Yes, there’s always Google, but there’s also dedicated search engines that can pinpoint every patent you can think of. This is where Global Patent Solutions comes into play.

The SkySong-based patent search engine has boomed in recent years, going from two to 130+ searchers in under 10 years. The company moved its headquarters to SkySong in 2010, right around the time the tech incubator began seeing big growth in technological innovations. In fact, researchers over at SkySong in Scottsdale have pushed through almost 300 inventions this year alone. Technology commercialization over at the tech hub has also resulted in 123 U.S. patents issued in 2018, 78 license and option agreements signed, and 17 new startups.

At its core, Global Patent Solutions (GPS) helps inventors and IP professionals across the globe with patent research and consulting. Their clients range from IP attorneys to patent agents to universities and entrepreneurs. The team at GPS tracks down patents for their clients to make sure everything is squared away to go ahead with their next patent-related decisions.

“The underpinning of what we do is provide a team to our clients. We have more than 100 engineers and scientists, who are full-time, and their expertise is in patentable technologies,” said David Odland, CEO of Global Patent Solutions, who started the company with his wife and president of GPS, Kathryn Odland. “We cover the gamut of all technologies to understand the tech itself and the patent space. We want to know the relation between the patents.”

After years of working as patent examiners back east, and working with a number of government-awarded contracts, the Odlands headed west to expand their own work. GPS tracks down current patents based on invention or concept through an extensive algorithm. From there, the company is able to determine if a client’s invention may be patentable and then determine the value and coverage of the invention.

Clients can also have searches performed for specific claims of a patent to see if they’re still valid. GPS sifts through U.S. Patents and U.S. Published Applications to track down all the specifics.

For GPS, time has been kind to it and the industry it’s in. In the United States, there’s been an 8 percent year-over-year increase in new patents. This has given way to more and more clients using Global’s search strategy, especially those in the tech industry. In fact, China has increased its U.S. patents by tenfold in less than 10 years, roughly the same length of time GPS has been in business.

“Right now we’re excited; there seems to be tremendous changes and opportunity in the industry,” says Kathryn Odland. “But we plan on continuing to grow and add some additional products and services, whether that’s through acquisitions or organic growth.”