Who are the key patent applicants within an industry?
Top patent applicants
Categorising patent family data into key business units provides an intuitive summary of how the leading corporates have changed their patent focus over time.
How do I make this complex analysis meaningful from a commercial perspective?
Competitive innovation snapshot
The strength assessment profile highlights the company’s strengths and weaknesses on a relative scale. This web acts as a summary metric for the company section of this report, providing an overall comparison of internal and external factors that can affect the company’s patent portfolio, which are categorised into key technology sectors. These factors are highlighted below:
Inventor productivity - the average number of patents per inventor
Global coverage – the average number of countries of publication per international patent family
Innovation trend – a moving trend metric based upon priority patent data
Number of years in technology sector – the average number of years a company has patented
Which patents are most likely to be the most valuable and hold the greatest licensing potential?
Highest cited patents
This chart represents - within a company’s/group of competitors/industry -those patents that have the highest forward citations from third party improvement patents over time. It is the highest citations that present the greatest commercial value – and also litigation risk to a company. The number of citations per patent is represented by the y-axis, and the x-axis indicates year-on-year activity. Those patents that appear above the 3rd standard deviation line show highly innovative technologies that are likely to be of significant industry importance. These may be the most commercially viable or easily out-licensed patents within a portfolio and are likely to be of high commercial and strategic importance to the company.
Which companies are pacing technology trends?
Competitive landscape
A key component of patent analytics is a review of the importance of a company’s patent publications to others. Patent citation analysis is the only quantitative and reliable method that can be used to analyse the transfer of knowledge between companies. Patent citations essentially provide a paper trail on the knowledge flows from cited, (referenced), to citing patents. Patents weighted by forward citations provide a much better measure of patent value than actual patent counts. Citations may equally contribute to a company’s market value. Citation analysis gives a good indication of those innovators who are pacing the market and those companies who are filing emerging technology solutions. This analysis serves as a useful benchmark in identifying potential licensees and licensors, in addition to potential infringements. Citation analysis can be used to identify emerging competitors and to help identify patent applicants that should be reviewed during contentious patent activities. Different citation rules are adapted by the various Patent Offices. Overall we do see that the number of citations per patent have increased recently with the advent of computerised research. An increase of 1 cite per patent is estimated to equal an increase of 3% market value. Citation levels will typically decrease for all patents during the last 5 years partially due to average handling periods at most patent offices. This analysis is based upon US citation data. The citation landscape chart demonstrates the competitive landscape as well as potential commercialisation and risk-management issues. Citation analysis can be used to identify competitors who may have not been previously known to the company.
In terms of how to interpret this chart, the left hand side represents the third party that owns prior art, which has been referenced by the company analysed within this report. The right hand side of the chart displays who owns subsequent improvement patents to previous disclosures by the company analysed.
What are a company’s technological strengths and weaknesses?
Top International Patent Classification chart
This chart represents the top IPC’s that are used by company/group of competitors/industry. The presentation of technology highlights industry trends based upon top IPC rankings for all patent families. Shifts in technology sectors provide a valuable insight into how technology strategies have changed over time, and speak to past and new product development.
Who are the most heavily engaged attorneys or attorney firms for the prosecution of patents?
Key patent counsel
The key patent counsel charts show the most heavily engaged attorneys or attorney firms for the prosecution of patents. The analyses is often used in the consolidation of a company’s patent portfolio to one preferred form, and/or identify leading patent firms or attorneys within a specific technology.
Which individuals have been the most innovative and responsible for key IP?
Patent creation by key inventor
The key inventor chart displays the top inventors for each competitor based upon the number of patent families. This analysis can be used to identify the best inventors to acquire and can also be used by companies to review the success of an inventor recognition scheme.
Which companies have the vision to co-assign or who prefers to take a more litigious viewpoint?
Co assignment activity table
The co-assignment table lists companies and academic institutions that, within this example, have worked with five competitors. Data is based upon patent family data and provides a good indication of those companies that activity work with third parties (even competitors) in order to advance and expand their patent portfolios. The converse can be seen in companies that choose not to partner with corporate or academic institutions, perhaps preferring to take a more litigious view with regards to these companies patent filing strategies.
Does the company/group of competitors/industry exhibit a young or old portfolio?
Expiration chart
The range of expiration dates of global patent families addresses the longevity of a company’s/industry’s monopoly. By charting the percentage of patents within the analysed patent dataset due to expire within five years or less, between 6-10 years and more than 11 years, a comprehensive view of the length product/s can be exploited is obtained.
What is the extent of R&D activity vs. international protection?
Patent priority and publication by country
The patent priority and publication by country chart illustrates the relationship between priority and grant countries (this could be for a company, a group of competitors or an entire industry). Priority countries provide an indication of core R&D activity, in-house legal services, and suggest the location of key inventors. Publication countries point to where the desired patent protection and key commercial opportunities exist. It is recognised that competitors within an industry will strive to have strong patent coverage in current and future markets and will place strategic patents where competitors are active. Typically, there is fewer priority data (first patent filing) on the basis that one priority claim often leads to many national filings. WO data represents those patent applications that are filed directly with the International Bureau of WIPO.
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