Are there hidden opportunities within your IP portfolio?

Nerac specializes in IP analysis and landscape assessment to guide innovative organizations seeking to enhance business growth by leveraging strategic IP. From polymers to genomics to consumer goods, our expertise in IP assessment drives your success. Trust Nerac’s unbiased and comprehensive analysis to help you maximize your intellectual property potential.

Combine an IP assessment with an exploration of emerging technology for additional market insight!

Your trusted Partner

Nerac recognizes careful portfolio management as a critical enabler for innovative organizations aiming to stay at the cutting edge of technology advancement, maximize the return on innovation investments and compete successfully in crowded and diverse markets.

Nerac has decades of proven success helping clients protect and leverage their portfolios, reduce product development cycle times and bring new products to market quickly and efficiently.

5000+

Users Worldwide

23,000+

Research Reports

60+

Years in Business

A sampling of sectors where we have experience include:

  • Specialty Chemistry: formulation chemistry, industrial chemicals, performance chemicals, surfactants, catalysts, reagents, and excipients.
  • Medical Devices: cardiovascular, dentistry, imaging, orthopedics, and in vitro diagnostic devices (IVDs).
  • Life Sciences: Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical and Drug Development, Nutraceuticals
  • Engineering-based Technologies: optical engineering, electronic devices, optoelectronics, semiconductors, communications, automotive, aerospace, machinery and related technologies

Unlock the Potential of Your IP Portfolio with Nerac’s Strategic Insight

Our sophisticated analytics empower you to assess the risk across your intellectual property assets, guiding you to make informed decisions on whether to enhance your R&D efforts, secure patents, or pursue licensing to optimize profit margins for new technologies.

Discover how Nerac can support your IP management goals:

Interested in learning more about how Nerac can help you and your team with:

  • Assistance with Patent Prior Art, Freedom to Operate, and Invalidity Searches.
  • Services for Patent Licensing and Commercialization.
  • Comprehensive Patent Landscape Analysis.
  • In-depth IP Due Diligence, including Novelty, Clearance, Freedom to Operate, Infringement, Invalidation, and State of the Art evaluations.

Learn How to Leverage Nerac’s Unique Resources

Nerac’s IP analysts have backgrounds in the electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering disciplines, and collaborate with analysts from other industries such as chemistry/materials, medical devices, food and dietary supplements, energy and pharmaceuticals to develop the research team appropriate for your specific needs.

What You Can Expect From Nerac:

  • Seasoned technical researchers with in-depth market knowledge and access to global database resources
  • Flexible, reliable, cost effective results, customized to your needs
  • Collaboration from project scope to client deliverable
  • Guidance for best practices and most efficient approach
  • Unbiased, third-party evaluation
  • Peace of Mind

The Nerac Difference

Nerac’s services enable clients to quickly expand their in-house research operation with exceptional expertise and scalable capability. While many consulting and outsourcing firms focus on serving large project customers, Nerac is one of the few firms in the market focused on providing an attractive choice for clients seeking rapid response research and advisory services for mission-critical engagements that require highly experienced expert advisors in a wide variety of disciplines.

Nerac analysts have expertise in areas including:

  • Business Opportunity Identification and Vetting

  • Competitive Intelligence

  • Intellectual Property

  • Diligence and Risk Mitigation

  • Market Assessment

  • Regulatory Policy

  • Strategic Alliance Services

  • Technology and Innovation Scouting

Nerac’s Subscription Benefits

A Nerac subscription offers numerous benefits for clients who require frequent support:

Convenience and Scalability

Easily scale your research operations with on-demand access to expert analysts.

Cost Savings and Predictability

With a subscription, you gain cost-effective services and better financial forecasting.

Direct Communication and Collaboration

Enjoy a direct line of communication with our experts, fostering stronger business relationships.

Higher Customer Engagement

Our collaborative approach ensures your needs are met with personalized services and tailored support.

Ready to Strengthen Your IP Strategy?

Don’t let uncertainty undermine your innovation efforts. Let’s discuss how our IP research and strategy services can protect your assets, uncover opportunities, and power your growth.

Talk to a Nerac Advisor
Talk to a Nerac Advisor
Schedule a Consultation
Schedule a Consultation

Meet Our Intellectual Propety Analysts

Ben Bahavar
Ph.D.

Lori Burdick
Ph.D., MBA

Richard Hendriks
Ph.D.

Richard Maldanis
Ph.D.

Rosemarie Szostak
Ph.D.

Frequently Asked Questions

Working with a Nerac analyst means more than just searches. We understand your technology, guide you through findings, and highlight the most relevant insights and leads for your business objectives.

While tools like Patsnap are useful, the value you gain from Nerac comes from our unbiased, third-party perspective and the expertise of analysts who conduct sophisticated research every day. With no stake in your project’s continuation, Nerac analysts provide objective findings based solely on data and technical assessment. This differs from internal teams who may – often unintentionally – have a vested interest in supporting a specific direction. Your analyst brings deep experience in intellectual property research, including understanding search objectives, optimizing strategies to surface the most relevant patents, and interpreting results within your business or legal context. Nerac regularly partners with legal and R&D teams to ensure that searches are comprehensive, accurate, and aligned with both technical and strategic considerations.

Deriving actionable insights from technology, market, and patent literature can be challenging. That’s why Nerac works closely with you from the start, clearly defining the scope, confirming your objectives, and engaging with you throughout the research process. Nerac’s relationship-based approach ensures you stay informed as insights develop. Your analyst draws on deep expertise to identify the most relevant information, validate its accuracy, and clearly explain how the data was gathered, analyzed, and interpreted. This transparency gives you confidence that the results are reliable, aligned with your goals, and ready to be applied directly to your business decisions.

No, our team consists of experts from academia, industry, and business – not legal practitioners. Patent attorneys come to Nerac to obtain technical opinion because thorough patent & non-patent prior art searches must be conducted by experienced engineers and scientists. Your attorney then uses our research results to develop and deliver their legal advice.

Yes. When you work with Nerac, you benefit from analysts with decades of experience deciphering chemical nomenclature and Markush substructures across pharma, specialty chemicals, and agrochemical fields. Your analyst will identify and interpret relevant substructures, chemical nomenclatures and chemical moieties, and related prior art to determine whether similar compounds have been patented.  Markush claims are also reviewed and interpreted to assess whether they match the chemical structures you are evaluating.

Your Nerac analyst can help you identify and evaluate potential licensing partners for your technology by monitoring intellectual property landscapes, assessing companies’ existing technology portfolios, and analyzing market positioning to pinpoint candidates that align with your goals. Nerac analysts also provide insights into collaboration history, strategic fit, and commercial potential, giving you a clear picture of which targets are worth pursuing and how to engage them effectively.

Your Nerac analyst can help you identify and evaluate potential licensing activities or partners for your technology. We monitor intellectual property landscapes, assess companies’ existing technology portfolios, and analyze market positioning to pinpoint candidates that align with your goals. We also provide insights into collaboration history, strategic fit, market penetration and commercial potential, giving you a clear picture of which targets are worth pursuing and how to engage them effectively.

An IP landscape maps patent families in a technology area to reveal trends, competitors, white spaces (unfilled gaps), and potential opportunities for you. It helps you visualize and understand where innovation is occurring, who the key players are, and where there may be room for differentiation or expansion. You can rely on Nerac analysts, who are experts in developing patent landscapes and using advanced tools to visualize and analyze the results, to deliver clear, decision-ready insights. Companies like yours find these landscapes invaluable for technology decision-making and opportunity assessment, from guiding R&D priorities to supporting licensing, partnership, and go-to-market strategies.

Yes. Your Nerac analyst can conduct a comprehensive non-patent landscape study covering all relevant technical publications, including journal articles, books, conference proceedings, and dissertations. This study helps you identify prior art, understand the state of the technology, and assess potential non-infringement considerations.

Metamaterials are a unique class of manufactured materials with properties not found in nature. You can rely on Nerac’s analysts to identify the academic institutions most active in this field and highlight the important breakthroughs they’ve made over the last three to five years. We’ll compile peer‑reviewed technical articles, conference papers, and university press releases, and organize the findings into three categories — new structures, improved manufacturing methods, and novel properties — according to your specific needs.

Your Nerac analyst can provide a comprehensive freedom-to-operate search to identify any active patent families containing formulations with the specified constituents. This worldwide search ensures you have a clear view of existing IP and potential constraints, helping you make informed decisions about your project.

Your Nerac analyst can provide comprehensive competitive intelligence and patent landscape assessment. We track competitors’ R&D activities, patent filings, product launches, and strategic moves into adjacent markets. By analyzing trends, IP portfolios, and business strategies, we help you understand where competitors are innovating, which markets they are targeting, and where opportunities may exist for your company to differentiate or expand. We can identify shifts in competitor interest by reviewing their recent patent activity, press releases, trade journal articles, SEC filings for publicly traded companies, and blog postings. This information helps to provide insight into any new technology interest or course changes.

Yes. Your Nerac analyst can set up cost-effective automated alerts or create a custom briefing tailored to your needs. This approach monitors competitors’ patents and related activity, providing you with actionable insights to stay informed and strategically positioned.

We’ll identify citations to your patents (excluding self-citations) with our US Only Patent Scout, so you can track interest and influence in your technology space.

Our Global Patent Scout finds citations to your patents worldwide (excluding self-citations), giving you visibility into international recognition and potential opportunities.

You’ll identify companies working in adjacent spaces, spot potential infringement, and uncover partnership opportunities.

We’ll identify patents in your portfolio that are 15–17 years old and approaching expiration with our Self Patents analysis.

Our Technology Topics tool shows you all patents expiring in your specific technology areas.

We’ll track your competitors’ expiring patents to identify new market opportunities and potential licensing plays for you.

You’ll gain insight into upcoming market shifts, identify new opportunities for product development, and stay ahead of competitive landscape changes.

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