Company

Bsquare [NASDAQ: BSQR] helps organizations of all types harness IoT data in order to drive better business outcomes. Based in Bellevue, Washington, Bsquare also has locations in Europe and Asia, employing around 250 employees worldwide.

Team

Chief Technology Officer, Dave Wagstaff and his team of data scientists are constantly innovating but as of 2015 had not begun pursuing patents for their inventions. The Bsquare team suspected its inventions were patentable but was unfamiliar with the process of applying for and obtaining patents. As a result, the company had not created an invention protection strategy.

Issues

The IoT industry is highly competitive, having grown rapidly over the last several years. With thousands of companies creating new IoT-related technologies, Bsquare knew that protecting its inventions through patents would help the company remain a leader in the market. In late 2015, Bsquare’s leadership decided to begin obtaining patents, and set out to identify the best way to quickly build a patent portfolio that was representative of its considerable innovations.

Need

Bsquare held a few patents from many years prior but nobody involved in the process remained on staff. The company searched for a partner that could help them identify patentable material, draft and file high-quality patents, and assist in the development of its overall patent strategy, all at a reasonable cost.

As a technology company with an engineering mindset, Bsquare was attracted to how TurboPatent® uses technology to foster repeatable processes and consistently produce high-quality output, as opposed to the bespoke methods used by patent attorneys.

Solution

TurboPatent Engineers (TPEs) have acted as the outsourced IP management team for Bsquare. They established efficient processes for capturing patentable ideas by initiating periodic invention mining session with Wagstaff and his team. Then TurboPatent produced objective analytics to identify which ideas have the strongest likelihood of being issued granted patents. Using technology, powered by artificial intelligence, TPEs draft and file high-quality provisional and non-provisional patent applications that receive half as many time-consuming Office actions from the USPTO as traditionally drafted applications.

Results

TurboPatent’s Automated Invention Protection (AIP) services have enabled Bsquare to establish early filing dates for their technologies in a highly competitive industry. The TurboPatent Engineers provide strategic oversight by identifying patenting opportunities that will position the company as leader, allowing it to stake its claim before competitors could do so.

Thus far, TurboPatent has drafted and filed 15 provisional patent applications and converted eight of them to non-provisional patent applications, with more on the way.

With full trust in TurboPatent’s TPEs to manage Bsquare’s IP strategy, Wagstaff and his team can spend their time inventing new, innovative technologies. They know that IP portfolio planning, invention tracking, and the cumbersome patent drafting and application process is being handled by experts whose goal is to protect their technology for years to come. 

Quote

“TurboPatent has made building a patent portfolio painless, eliminating the overhead of extra employees and the hassle of dealing with the patenting process,” said CTO Dave Wagstaff. “Their strategic leadership has helped us identify patenting opportunities and quickly act upon them so we can protect our position in the market.”