How a Technology Transfer Office Uses Patent Analytics

Under France 2030, public R&D stakeholders are expected to demonstrate clear alignment with national technology priorities, ensure transparency in the use of public funding, and provide tangible evidence of impact. Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) and in France, the Sociétés d’Accélération du Transfert de Technologies (SATT) network in particular, play a central role in the transformation. Positioned at the intersection of research, markets, and public policy, they are tasked with structuring intellectual property, supporting technology maturation, and guiding innovation toward economic and societal outcomes. At the same time, also meeting growing expectations for accountability. 

Erganeo and Sci-ty: how a technology transfer office aligns public research, policy, and markets 

SATT Erganeo supports French universities and research organizations in protecting, developing, and transferring innovations arising from public research. As part of this mission, Erganeo plays a strategic role in ensuring that intellectual property portfolios are not only protected, but also aligned with national and European priorities. 

This role is particularly critical within Sci-ty, a France 2030 project operating under the National Acceleration Strategies. Sci-ty focuses on two major strategic areas: Sustainable Cities and Innovative Buildings, and Digitalization and Decarbonization of Mobility. Each strategy is structured around three priority technology axes and brings together universities, research centers, and French technology transfer offices. 

Sci-ty is responsible for delivering a coherent intellectual property (IP) strategy to its members that reflects public policy priorities, supports strategic funding decisions, and helps prove the impact of public R&D investments. To fulfill this mandate, Erganeo needed a clear, validated, and decision-ready view of the consortium’s patent assets. 

The challenge: making large patent portfolios policy and decision ready 

The first challenge was scale. Sci-ty consortium members collectively held more than 10,000 patent families across a wide range of technologies and applications. Reliably classifying these assets according to the priority technologies defined by public policies and Sci-ty’s scientific leadership was not feasible using traditional or generic approaches. 

A second challenge was governance. Any classification framework needed to be robust enough to withstand scrutiny and to be validated by a dedicated committee of public research scientific directors. This required clear boundaries, transparency in methodology, and the ability to iterate on the basis of expert feedback. 

Finally, Erganeo needed to move beyond inventory alone. To support Sci-ty’s IP strategy and guide strategic funding decisions, the organization required objective metrics to assess technological strength and market relevance, monitor portfolios by technology axis, and benchmark positioning at national, European, and global levels. 

The approach: from patent analytics to strategic funding decisions 

To address these challenges, Erganeo chose to collaborate with the LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions team to implement a structured, data-driven IP analysis workflow that combines the development of robust, reusable technology classifications to identify and analyze patents. 

The first step was to establish a shared, policy-aligned technology framework. Following an exploratory phase in which several IP analysis solutions were evaluated. Erganeo selected LexisNexis^® Classification for its ability to deliver precise and modular patent categorization. This decision was also supported by a clear roadmap for building and reviewing classifiers. 

Building the classifiers 

Once the classification builder was selected, the team moved on to creating ten dedicated classifiers, each aligned with a priority technology axis defined under Sci-ty’s two national strategies. These classifiers were refined through multiple iterations and validated in close collaboration between LexisNexis consultants and Sci-ty’s scientific leadership, ensuring that the resulting technology boundaries were both credible and relevant to public research priorities. 

Analyzing the landscape 

Having defined their technologies with a curated set of classifiers, Erganeo now needed to identify an IP analytics solution to synthesize the competitive landscape of these technologies. After learning about LexisNexis patent quality indicators such as the Patent Asset Index and Competitive Impact, they selected LexisNexis^® PatentSight+™ to measure innovation strength and identify promising technologies to invest in. Using these qualitative metrics, Erganeo evaluated each technology axis’s strength and market relevance.   

Read how insights from LexisNexis PatentSight+ analytics based on the Patent Asset Index metric explain why Google spent $15B to acquire a cybersecurity start-up. 

This dual approach, of defining technologies using classifiers and then using an analytics tool to study the field, enabled comprehensive portfolio monitoring and benchmarking at a global level. By looking at innovators from France and Europe to global competitors, it provides decision-makers with a clear, comparable view of leaders in a specific technology, new entrants that might have been developing a strong portfolio in a field, and identifies potential technology acquisitions or partners. 

The analyses were not conducted in isolation. Dedicated working groups leveraged the insights to produce tailored patent and market strategy reports for each Sci-ty axis. These reports were designed to inform decision-making bodies, support validation of Sci-ty’s national IP strategy, and guide strategic funding choices. 

Figure 1: Portfolio Size trends for selected Digitalization and Decarbonization of Mobility (DDM) classifiers, 2015–2024 (excluding China-only filings). 

Figure 2: Patent Asset Index trends for selected DDM classifiers, 2015–2024 (excluding China-only filings).

Impact and lessons learned: a replicable model for public R&D value creation 

The collaboration between SATT Erganeo and LexisNexis established a robust and repeatable model for translating complex patent data into strategic intelligence aligned with France 2030 priorities. Key outcomes include: 

• Policy-aligned visibility of public R&D assets 
By combining LexisNexis Classification with a structured validation process involving scientific leadership, Erganeo established a clear and credible inventory of patent assets mapped directly to national technology priorities. This created a shared, policy-relevant view of innovation outputs across the Sci-ty consortium. 

• Objective identification of high-value technologies 
Using advanced indicators available in PatentSight+, including the Patent Asset Index and Competitive Impact, Erganeo moved beyond traditional markers such as patent counts to assess technological strength and market relevance by priority axis. This enabled evidence-based prioritization of technologies with the highest strategic potential. 

• Stronger support for strategic funding and governance decisions 
Reliable portfolio monitoring and benchmarking at national, European, and global levels provided decision-making bodies with transparent, defensible inputs to guide strategic funding choices and validate Sci-ty’s IP strategy at the national level. 

• Improved competitive and sovereignty awareness 
Systematic mapping of technology leaders, potential partners, and global competitors strengthened Sci-ty’s ability to position public research within international innovation landscapes, supporting sovereignty objectives in key ecological and digital transition domains. 

• A scalable model for the technology transfer ecosystem 
The project demonstrated that SATT Erganeo can now support other SATTs by sharing methodologies, tools, and best practices for IP structuring and analysis, strengthening consistency, and maturity across the broader technology transfer ecosystem. 

Together, these outcomes illustrate how advanced patent analytics enable technology transfer offices to demonstrate the return on public R&D investment, strengthen accountability, and guide innovation strategies with confidence. 

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