As the IP landscape is changing, Materion Corporation is changing to meet it. “Materion has traditionally been a trade secret company,” explained Dr. Ian Tribick, President of
Materion’s Large Area Coatings business unit. “But, we are evolving, especially since the America Invents Act went into effect in March 2013, there has been an increased focus on IP within the organization.
Materion Corporation is a provider of a diverse range of advanced materials. “We don’t have a catalog, and many of our products are designed and built to be customer specific.
For example, we’re in the majority of the world’s smart phones—but most people would not know that. Traditionally, we have looked on our IP as a trade secret and protected it,” Dr. Tribick explained. But now things are changing. For
Materion, IP is transitioning into a valuable asset throughout the entire product lifecycle. “It is important as we go down the technology roadmap, to have a strong understanding and clear vision of what IP we might need to protect, license in from someone else, or when we might need to license out some of our technology. For example, we might have a technology that is end-of-life as far as we are concerned, but it still has value in the marketplace and can be licensed out.” As the perception of IP shifts, the business model can evolve, and it’s clear that IP adds value throughout its lifetime.
Additionally, Materion has been growing rapidly. In the last few years, they have acquired a number of new companies,
“So that means assimilating a myriad of new cultures and different methodologies,” Dr. Tribick explained. The company has gone through a significant effort to successfully rename itself, rebrand and unify the organization and continues to put common processes in place. The shift of IP’s role in the organization and the need for standardization led to the search for a new IP management tool they could use across the business units.

INNOGRAPHY: USER FRIENDLY AND RAPID
ENHANCEMENT CADENCE
Dr. Tribick said a small team at Materion spent about a year evaluating about five products in the
IP management space and, “came to the conclusion that Innography was the most user-friendly and was adding new capabilities at a faster pace.
descriptive paragraph will automatically get sent through Innography’s semantic search for a quick freedom to operate check. Dr. Tribick explained,
“This will provide some initial information: If you found something, how close was it? Do we need to modify? Didn’t find anything? Great! Keep going. It would be the first decision point.”
“There is a huge amount of flexibility in the tool. If you are chasing down a specific technical topic and you want to see the white space, or you want to see who has been filing in the space, or you are just looking at freedom to operate and whether there is any IP out there that you be aware of, the tool has the options and workflows to help you discover and answer those questions,” Dr Tribick commented.
“Innography puts the power to do this research in the hands of all IP professionals. Traditionally, those haven’t been activities that a non-expert level person could do. And that’s a huge advantage. It’s given us the ability to do some analytical work ourselves rather than always relying on outside counsel that costs a lot of money--always more than you think it will. And having the ability to do the basics--and a little more than the basics in house--has been a huge benefit.
“With Innography–the tool is very user friendly–I have had great feedback like ‘I got into it, started using it, and it’s really been beneficial in making quick informed decisions as well as providing a baseline for any IP decisions with outside counsel.’ And when I get feedback from across our organization that is positive and supporting the initiative as well as contributing to our success then you know things are going in the right direction.”
Innography also plays a part in streamlining
Materion’s ideation workflow. “When we do ideation, it gets entered into an IP database, and we’re building a connection so that the idea’s
MATERION IS FOCUSED ON THE FUTURE
Materion is focused on expansion and what are the most appropriate future technologies to support that growth, and Innography plays a supporting role in determining the right strategy. Part of his role is understanding what is on the technology horizon up to 7-10 years out--and how to help Materion get there quickly. “We have to think beyond developing everything organically, and adopt a different mindset to combine our organic activities with inorganic activities to get to there faster.” It’s not just build, but sometimes build plus invest in IP. “You can spend ten years to develop a new product and have the best product in the world, but if someone else gets there faster because they did it a different way, you lose. Innography has allowed me to very quickly dig into a company we might be interested in, or if we come up with a conceptual idea for a new product or process--we can take a quick look to see if there’s something out there that’s similar. Innography and all the analytics in the tool can help us make good, fast and informed decisions or at the very least point us in the right direction.”
Materion (NYSE: MTRN) is one of the world’s premier advanced materials solutions providers. Materion, is committed to developing, manufacturing and marketing highly engineered advanced materials for global customers across a wide range of markets, including consumer electronics, defense and science, industrial and aerospace, automotive electronics, telecommunications infrastructure, appliances, medical and energy. innography.com
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