10 most common pitfalls of patent research > 10. You can’t predict how likely it is that an application will grant or a grant will lapse
When a competitor files a new application in your technology domain, one of the first questions that gets asked is “what is the probability that the application will grant?” These applications may create future freedom to operate risk for a product that is still in development and does not have patent protection.
A similar question is raised for granted patents that also pose future freedom to operate challenges. Given the number of patents that are not maintained to full term, “how likely is it that these patents will still be in force by the time the business plans to launch a new product?”
Estimating whether a patent application will grant or whether a grant will be allowed to lapse is complicated, and to provide an estimate with an acceptable degree of confidence requires a lot of data points and a solid statistical model.
Determine if your patent data includes predictive metrics, and if so, use them alongside your own estimate of grant or early lapse.
Predictive metrics in Derwent Innovation have been developed and refined using machine learning to analyze historical outcomes across more than 150 input variables.
With predictive metrics, and your own industry expertise, you can make a higher confidence assessment of whether certain patents may impact your freedom to operate at the point in the future when you intend to launch a new product or enter a new market.