Stay Ahead of Disruptive Trends Using Advanced Patent Analytics

How to Identify Technology Leaders

Identifying technology leaders is an essential process for businesses aiming to stay ahead of the competition. However, determining which companies are genuinely innovative in a specific technology area can be a complex task. This is because publicly available raw patent data often provides an unreliable perspective. While some companies may rely on revenue data or product sales figures, these sources alone fail to reveal who is introducing truly disruptive trends. Also, patent data is forward-looking and can thus help even predict the evolution of competitive environments early on.

In this blog, we summarize learnings from a conversation we recently had with Dr. Nina  Müller, a Certified Patent Engineer at GOTTSCHALD Patentanwälte. This is one of Germany’s leading intellectual property law firms. Dr. Müller shared how PatentSight+’s data, in-depth analytics, and visualization capabilities solve these challenges, providing her with a clear and objective approach to assessing true technology leaders.

Introduction and explanation of the problem

Dr. Müller explains that she wanted to perform an analysis of the wearable tech industry to identify the leading companies in this space that are setting the disruptive trends in motion. She stated, “The goal was to see which was the first company to be a technology leader in wearables,”. She later presented these findings from the analysis at a medical conference. Watch a video where she explains the process here.

Here’s a step-by-step outline of how she achieved this:

Step 1: Identifying key contributors in the wearables space

First, Dr. Müller identified the key players in the wearables market. She began by focusing on 52 companies that were exhibitors at MEDICA, an annual trade fair for medical technology, medical products, and electromedicine held in Düsseldorf, Germany.

She curated the list to focus on companies involved in wearable technology. Those making significant strides in developing smartwatches, fitness trackers, medical sensors, and other wearable devices.

Once these companies were identified, Dr. Müller and her team supplemented their research with a 2019 patent search published by WIPO related to AI technology. This added layer of research allowed them to pinpoint which companies were not just contributing to wearable tech but also driving its evolution through innovations in AI.

Step 2: Leveraging PatentSight+ for Deeper Insights

After identifying the key players, the next step was to analyze the data. Dr. Müller turned to PatentSight+, using its industry-proven metrics for a more in-depth analysis of patent portfolios.

One key metric that Dr. Müller relied on was PatentSight+ External Technology Relevance. She used this to study the “patent families that have received the most attention from third parties.”

Figure: Tracking the technology influence of a portfolio over time, based on citations from patents owned by other applicants.

To explain, the metric identifies patent families that third parties are citing in their own patents. This is a strong indicator that these patents are not only impactful but also highly relevant to ongoing technological advancements in the field.

By visualizing the trends observed in these patent families, Dr. Müller’s team discovered a particularly notable one owned by Garmin. This patent family had maintained significant relevance over an extended period. This was much longer than other patents whose relevance either diminished or peaked later. She says, “We have the highest flexibility in designing and configuring graphical representations. So we can do the analysis over time, which is also quite unique when compared to other patent intelligence tools.”​

This finding indicated that Garmin was one of the earliest technology leaders in the wearables market, laying the foundation for much of today’s wearable tech.

Step 3: Exploring How Apple Built on Garmin’s Innovations

One of the most fascinating aspects of this analysis was when Dr. Müller’s team explored how other companies were building upon Garmin’s patent family.

Apple emerged as a key player that had cited Garmin’s patents multiple times. Interestingly, Apple relied on Garmin’s technology during two distinct periods: once between 2012 and 2017, and again from 2016 to 2020.

Figure: Portfolio size development trends among major wearables manufacturers.

These two waves of citations indicated a clear evolution in Apple’s strategy. Initially, the company leveraged Garmin’s technology for early wearable advancements. This is clear evidence of a disruptive trend that could have been spotted years ahead of the market disruption.

Later, they adapted it for their smartwatch innovations. This suggested that they continuously built upon Garmin’s foundational patents. It also demonstrates that Garmin played a critical role in shaping Apple’s wearable technology.

Figure: Portfolio size trends of Apple’s patents in specific CPC classified technologies.

To gain further insights, Dr. Müller’s team shifted focus to Apple’s own patents, analyzing the CPC classes assigned to those patents. This revealed a clear shift in focus over time. Initially, Apple’s patents were centered around sports-related technology, such as music support during workouts.

However, as time went on, Apple expanded its focus to cover data processing, sensor housing, and diagnostics, all critical components of modern wearable devices. This shift mirrored Apple’s transition from the iPhone era to the smartwatch era, which was evident in their product development.

As Dr. Müller highlights, “If you then look at the products that Apple has developed during the different times, it might even be possible to say that those two waves in the Apple citations of the Garmin family, they seem to coincide with the transition from the iPhone era. So, this first wave to the smartwatch era, so this seems to be roughly correlated here.”

Step 4: Identifying disruptive trends in wearables technology

Ultimately, Dr. Müller’s team concluded that Garmin was one of the earliest technology leaders in the wearables market.

Through its foundational patent families, Garmin laid the groundwork for advancements in wearable technology that companies like Apple later built upon. The long-term relevance of Garmin’s patents underscored its pivotal role in shaping the wearables industry.

By meticulously analyzing patent families using the PatentSight+ analytics and visualization capabilities, Dr. Müller and her team were able to trace the evolution of wearable technology and identify the companies that were genuinely driving disruptive trends in this space. Talking about the data and analytics, she said, “What I like a lot is the transparent and good explanation of all indicators, because this gives you the opportunity to go over that and to really explain it to clients and always have an answer to them.”

Watch Dr. Mueller explain the process in this video

Patent analytics – the smarter approach to identifying disruptive trends

Dr. Müller identified Garmin as one of the earliest technology leaders in the wearables market by meticulously analyzing patent families and tracking their long-term relevance. She traced the evolution of wearable technology and revealed how other companies, like Apple, built upon Garmin’s foundational innovations. She emphasizes the critical role patent analytics plays in understanding market dynamics, observing that advanced patent analysis provides “valuable insights into the true drivers of innovation.”

PatentSight+ played a pivotal role in this process, providing advanced analytics that allowed Dr. Müller to dig deeper into the patent data. The solution’s reliable, cleansed, and harmonized patent data allowed her to capture key trends and innovative leaders and highlight impactful patent families. The visualizations made it easy to spot and understand these technological shifts.

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