Innovation teams worldwide spent much of 2025 navigating rapid technological changes and shifting expectations. Standard essential patents continued to influence competition across wireless, audio, and video technologies. Litigation activity increased, especially in areas where standards intersect with global supply chains. Artificial intelligence started reshaping daily IP workflows. Meanwhile, executives and boards sought clearer ways to understand how patent portfolios support strategy, investment, and long-term resilience. These combined forces made transparency and reliable insights more important than ever.
Below is a look at the themes, milestones, and breakthroughs that defined the year in IP.
Across industries, three key themes emerged as dominant forces shaping IP strategy.
The growing reliance on analytics-driven decision making in 2025 made the reliability of patent data more important than ever for organizations seeking clarity in complex technology spaces. As AI-powered tools became part of everyday IP workflows, many teams recognized that the value of these tools depends on the quality of the data they interpret. When underlying records are incomplete or inconsistent, the insights generated by AI systems can become less reliable and more difficult to act upon.
Portfolio pruning based on the IP maturity model gained traction as economic uncertainty led to cost pressure for IP departments, which needed to find efficient solutions without losing resources. Companies used LexisNexis quality metrics and competitive benchmarks to prune patents that offered limited strategic or defensive value. This shift allowed organizations to reinvest in high-value technologies while strengthening portfolio alignment. Companies across sectors sought ways to reduce costs while increasing portfolio strength. Webinars and supporting blogs explored how pruning has evolved from a cost-control measure to a core strategy for sharpening competitive differentiation. Many organizations have adopted structured pruning frameworks, supported by PatentSight+ and metrics, to eliminate low-value assets and reinvest with purpose.
Maintaining the momentum it gained in the past years, using insights from IP analytics in Stakeholder communication became a defining expectation. With intangible assets now representing over 80% of enterprise value, most of what makes companies innovative and valuable remains invisible in traditional reporting. Boards, investors and regulators are increasingly demanding clear narratives evidenced by standardized KPIs. LexisNexis® PatentSight+TM visualizations have been proven in industry use-cases for demonstrating portfolio strength, market direction and strategic alignment. Companies increasingly framed IP as a source of competitive advantage rather than a cost center.
Throughout 2025, IP professionals around the globe gathered at LexisNexis events, leveraging the opportunities to compare strategies, discuss emerging challenges, and examine how their roles are evolving as innovation becomes increasingly central to organizational strategies.
The LexisNexis® PatentSight+TM Summit in Wiesbaden set the tone in Europe early in the year. With the theme “Bringing IP to the Boardroom,” the event showcased how organizations are transitioning from reactive portfolio management to forward-looking strategies informed by measurable insights into innovation. The Summit revealed a new level of alignment between IP leaders and senior executives who are increasingly relying on patent intelligence to support investment decisions, ESG commitments, technology pivots, and competitive strategy. The event’s success paved the way for its evolution into the next edition, titled the 2026 Global IP Impact Summit. Register for the 2026 Global IP Impact Summit.
Innovation and strategic leadership were equally represented at the 2025 Global Standards and Leadership Conference in the US. Attendees explored the evolving landscape of standard essential patents, the growing importance of transparency in IoT and 6G ecosystems, and the challenges posed by diverse FRAND enforcement practices worldwide. The conference underscored one clear message: proactive engagement in standards development is no longer optional for companies competing in global markets. Planning is already underway for the 2026 edition in San Diego.
Across Asia, momentum was stronger than ever. In Korea, the LexisNexis IP Summit examined China’s patent acceleration, AI-driven analytics, and the increasing value of business intelligence in shaping competitive strategy. In Japan, both the PatentSight+ Summit and the PatentSight+ User Meeting drew record participation. Customers engaged deeply with topics such as IP governance, cross-functional decision making, and the future of AI-enabled patent analysis. Protégé TM in LexisNexis® PatentSight+TM demonstrations captured significant attention with participants highlighting its ability to shorten analysis cycles and empower researchers and engineers without requiring IP expertise.
In China, we continued to be a trusted voice in discussions around SEP licensing, global innovation trends, and standardization strategy. Events such as the ICT Forum, CIPAC, and the SEP Forum continued to reinforce our pivotal role in cultivating data-driven IP communities.
The US and EMEA webinars added another layer of thought leadership. Throughout the year, we explored topics that became central themes. Among them was a webinar around AI in patent classification, where participants gained firsthand experience of how machine learning can overcome the limitations of traditional categorization and enhance competitive intelligence. Other sessions highlighted how shifts in China’s innovation ecosystem are influencing global IP strategy, and how early-stage litigation analytics help companies build stronger cases from the start.
Industry leaders, stakeholders and decision makers gained a clearer perspective on global technology trends in 2025 through a series of in-depth reports that highlighted shifting SEP landscapes, rising innovators and changes in competitive positioning.
Early in the year, the 5G SEP Report offered a refreshed view of patent ownership and essentiality within one of the most competitive technology landscapes in the world. The report examined how companies are positioning themselves within the 5G standards ecosystem and how portfolio strength varies across regions and industry sectors. It provided a clearer understanding of who holds influence in key technical areas and how the 5G innovation race continues to evolve. A new edition of the 5G SEP Report will be released in 2026 with updated ownership insights, essentiality patterns, and emerging leadership trends that reflect the next stage of global 5G development.
The Innovation Momentum Report 2025, the fourth edition of our annual series, continued to track the companies that are shaping technological progress through sustained inventive activity. This year’s analysis reflected how innovation leadership is shifting geographically, and in each sector, companies with balanced portfolios and strong influence are outperforming their peers. The 2026 Innovation Momentum Report will continue this analysis and provide an updated view of which companies are gaining strength in the global innovation landscape and how their inventive activity is shaping future market leaders.
The Audio Codec SEP Report offered the most comprehensive view to date of patents covering AAC, Opus, MPEG-H, and EVS. The report revealed how complex and fragmented the audio standards landscape has become, identifying leading portfolios held by Fraunhofer, Dolby, NTT, Qualcomm, Huawei, and others. It also highlighted the challenges facing device makers who struggle to find which SEPs are licensed through pools, which are controlled by independent licensors, and which remain undisclosed. Insights generated through LexisNexis® Classification and LexisNexis® IPlytics provided the clarity needed to navigate this opacity.
The US SEP Litigation Report highlighted a decade-long increase in litigation associated with standardized essential patents (SEPs). Patent Assertion Entities continued to dominate filings across Wi-Fi, cellular, video, and audio technologies. Courts increasingly demanded objective, data-supported evidence in FRAND disputes. This trend strengthened the market’s reliance on tools such as Semantic Essentiality Scores and AI-powered portfolio classification.
The Cellular IoT Report highlighted portfolio positions in NB-IoT, LTE-M, LTE Cat 1, and V2X. Readers gained a clear understanding of who leads in each technology family, how portfolio quality differs from simple patent counts, and which companies participate in programs such as the Sisvel IoT pool and Avanci platforms. The report emphasized the importance of quality-based benchmarking, utilizing the Patent Asset Index, when assessing SEP strength.
2025 was the year artificial intelligence moved from a promising add-on to a foundational capability within the LexisNexis® Intellectual Property Solutions ecosystem.
AI-enabled analytics became central to how teams assessed portfolios, supported by new enhancements in LexisNexis® PatentSight+™. The new AI-supported capabilities made it easier for teams to interpret complex portfolios and turn analytics into strategic guidance. AI-Powered Features added a new level of ease to early analysis. Users could describe what they needed, and the system shaped the analysis, offering clear guidance on what the results showed and why they mattered. AI Classifiers added another layer of clarity by letting teams view portfolios through their own strategic definitions. Trained in LexisNexis® Classification and surfaced in PatentSight+ with relevance scores, they helped users apply custom views across search, tables, and charts to gain greater confidence in understanding technology activity. Companies increasingly rely on PatentSight+ to evaluate portfolio maturity, identify innovation strengths, and communicate IP value to executive committees and investors.
This year, we also announced the LexisNexis® ProtégéTM in PatentSight+TM, a new capability designed to make high-quality patent analytics accessible to teams beyond traditional IP functions. As detailed in the public announcement, Protégé enables users to pose natural language questions and receive clear, intuitive responses that accelerate early-stage exploration, facilitating the path to strategic insights and improving communication across R&D, strategy, and innovation teams.
During presentations in Japan, innovators, engineers, and R&D leaders responded strongly to Protégé’s ability to generate rapid analytical summaries, uncover relevant patterns, and streamline early discovery without requiring deep IP expertise. Participants noted that Protégé complements rather than replaces the work of IP professionals, helping teams validate concepts and prepare more informed conversations before involving IP specialists.
Underlying all of this progress was a renewed investment in data quality. The Cellular Verified initiative aligned ETSI declaration data with internal records from more than 35 major companies. This achievement set a new accuracy standard for SEP analysis and will continue to benefit the market for years to come.
If 2025 was the year of clarity, 2026 could be the year of acceleration. Demand for transparent SEP landscapes will continue to rise as wireless, IoT and multimedia technologies converge. Generative AI is all set to expand its role in supporting IP professionals spanning areas like search, benchmarking, essentiality assessment and strategic analysis. Boards and executives will expect even greater details in the way IP teams communicate risk and opportunity.
LexisNexis® Intellectual Property Solutions is preparing for this next phase of industry evolution. Our platforms will become more deeply integrated, bringing AI capabilities that will become increasingly intuitive and powerful. Most importantly, we will continue focusing on what matters most to our customers: delivering clarity, enabling confident decisions, and unlocking insights from a rigorously curated patent database that drives business impact.
Registration is already open for the 2026 Global IP Impact Summit and will soon open for the 2026 Global Standards Leadership Conference. Both events will bring together the world’s leading organizations, strategists, and innovators. Now is the time to secure your place and help shape the next era of IP intelligence.
For those wanting to accelerate their IP strategy in 2026, we invite you to explore demonstrations of PatentSight+, IPlytics, and Classification, to experience firsthand the advancements that are redefining how IP teams work.
We wish you all a Happy and Innovative New Year in 2026!
Read about the latest global business news from the perspective of IP analytics in our Resources section.
The Innovation Momentum 2025: The Global Top 100 report celebrates the top 100 companies that are breaking boundaries and setting new benchmarks in technology and industry through visionary advancements.
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