A New Approach to Logistics
TuSimple is an autonomous trucking company disrupting the logistics industry. Based in San Diego, the company is developing a commercial-ready level 4 (SAE) fully self-driving solution. TuSimple’s trucks have driven more than 10 million cumulative miles through testing, research and freight delivery, representing one of many industry firsts for the autonomous driving technology company.
Three drivers for TuSimple are to increase safety, decrease transportation costs, and reduce carbon emissions. Through the development of the company’s leading autonomous driving systems, purpose-built autonomous trucks, and the creation of the TuSimple Autonomous Freight Network, TuSimple is now a partner of choice for shippers and carriers. Its cutting-edge technology is transforming how freight is moved in nearly every way.
Strategically Leveraging IP
Paul Liu, Global Head of IP at TuSimple, says “having access to data and analytics about a company’s innovation and technology is a part of our IP strategy and daily routines. This information allows us to have a better understanding of how we may want to leverage IP once we have it, as well as a direction we could be moving our research efforts towards.”
A key part of Liu’s role, beyond managing TuSimple’s team of attorneys, patent agents, and paralegals is to ensure the company’s IP aligns with its business goals. With hundreds of patent assets under management, the TuSimple portfolio expands across the globe and securely positions the company as an industry leader. To ensure TuSimple’s expansive portfolio is managed efficiently and effectively, Liu needs insight into the industry trends and competitors filing strategies.
“In an industry where there are a lot of incumbents and new entrants to the space, competitive intelligence is crucial. Not only to understand areas associated with risks and where our competitors are actively filing, but it’s also crucial in helping TuSimple more effectively leverage the patents we already have and analyzing where there may be potential white space to exploit.”
Collecting and connecting the dots on all this information so it can be used to inform decision-making presents a complex challenge. “We often need data from a wide variety of sources, beyond strictly patent data, so it is important we have a well-rounded solution when it comes to innovation intelligence.”
“PatSnap offers us a global solution that provides more and better data, as well as a user-friendly and effective solution compared to the other providers out there.”
A Global Solution
To address this, TuSimple turned to PatSnap. Prior to using PatSnap the TuSimple team relied on open-source software but found too many limitations with their search capabilities. Liu notes, “They aren’t enterprise-level tools, so they lack the data we needed.” The key elements these solutions were missing include global patent data, non-patent literature, the thought leaders in a particular technology space, and white space analysis.
“PatSnap offers us a global solution that provides more and better data, as well as a user-friendly and effective solution compared to the other providers out there.” PatSnap’s easy-to-use interface allows users to answer various complicated questions related to patent data. Being able to visualize the data, such as patent trees, helps Liu accelerate the decision-making processes in a fast-paced industry and stay ahead of competitors.
TuSimple can use this information to assess priorities and whether they move forward with a project and its associated patent protection. Having analytics allows Liu to quickly examine:
- What is already out there?
- What are the risks?
- What the industry looks like?
- How much activity is there to benchmark TuSimple against the norm?
Since TuSimple transitioned to PatSnap, Liu is making faster, more impactful, and data-driven decisions. The company has a clearer picture of the patents and literature that are – and will be – transforming the autonomous trucking/freighting industry. Some of the key features that help Liu obtain this picture are:
- Patent family trees: Having the visual of patent families allows Liu to “quickly understand global filing strategies as well as how a patent has progressed over time.”
- Multilingual support: Having the ability to search in multiple languages, as well as translations embedded within PatSnap enables TuSimple to have a better understanding of the global patent landscape, and “effectively enables us to make faster decisions that are impactful and more data-driven.”
- Smart image: Having AI annotated figures within patent documents “has been a very useful value add, we can quickly look at a patent asset directly, and understand what it is and what it does.”
With PatSnap, TuSimple’s internal searches are completed in a fraction of the time. “PatSnap saves us from doing more onerous searches on free tools.” Most impressive to Liu is how integrated PatSnap is, from databases to multilingual support, to the different types of analyses you can do, it provides a one-stop shop for all patent analyses on a day-to-day basis.
