Consolidation or Development? The IP Service Providers’ Market remains Dynamic

The market of IP service providers other than law firms remains dynamic. There seems to be a lot of attention from investors, also outside the industry. Whether the changes are signs of fresh investment or merely consolidation among the same players is the big question. Although investment in the development of better products and services is good from a customer perspective, lower intensity of competition is less attractive.

Just being bigger and accumulating multiple services, either in the same or in adjacent areas will not bring additional value to customers. It seems that more and more IP service providers have understood that plug-in solutions for service extensions around strong IP Management Systems or similar heavily used software is the way forward.

This requires long-term commitments based on existing relationships and continued efforts to create better-integrated services. They conceptualize the service offerings with the user experience in mind (who are often entrenched with their existing IPMS) and by doing so substantially improve the software along with the service.

Working from home has demonstrated that every inch of progress made in the past to have fully paperless and well-connected processes with seamless interactions among and between in-house staff and their external partners or service providers was worth the prior efforts. This might be the real driving force for future improvements.

The big question mark I notice is whether open interfaces on the IP Management Systems and services or multiple distinct eco systems with their own proprietary interfaces will prevail. I would wish for more standardization on the interface side between the various tools and services allowing for even more new creative solutions to enter the market and later scale-up, reducing costs induced by each interface gap, and helping in-house IP teams to focus on value creation towards the operating business.