Open Access Intellectual Property Systems: A Comparison to Commercial Solutions in Competitive Intelligence

ICT/IS management plays an important role within the framework of innovation management, and one of the key elements of this role is the support of Competitive Intelligence in the context of innovation processes. The strategic information needs of innovation management are also directed towards different kinds of intellectual property (IP) information entities and commercialization. The purpose of this paper is to define these entities and IP information systems as an important part of a company’s Competitive Intelligence Unit for competitor analysis and technology trends. The open access IP information systems will be analyzed together with commercial solutions. The aim of this paper is to underline the importance of open access IP systems compared to added value commercial solutions for competitive intelligence purposes for SMEs. The comparison will be carried out using examples of patent searches within a concrete dataset.