The triangle team approach: Collaboration to provide technologically diverse customers with qualitative patent information research

Patent information service activities cannot always easily be outsourced. External patent information consultants, in spite of their expertise, are sometimes not satisfying the customer's need for high quality searches. The cause of the inadequacy may be the consultant's lack of in-depth knowledge of a particular field of technology and insufficient acquaintance with the subject of study. Customers can cope with this by training the consultant and intensely reviewing the first assignments. If however the customer has limited knowledge of how patent information research is done, training and instructing the consultant and assessing performance may not be practicable. This article illustrates a collaborative approach that a technical consulting organisation which is also a PATLIB centre, having available a multitude of technical research consultants and a small team of patent information specialists, can apply, in association with the customer's own technical and/or product expert, to deal with these possible shortcomings. Sirris launched a pilot project to develop and implement a collaborative model. The article gives an account of how the model was created and implemented, and describes the lessons learnt after 2 years in use.