Explore how the evolution of intellectual property departments led to the development of LexisNexis PatentSight+.

Not too long ago, Intellectual Property (IP) departments were not considered a core business function. Their role was limited to the filing, maintaining, and protecting the organization’s IP. However, rapidly advancing technology and innovation and the blurring of the boundaries between different technologies have created a complex innovation landscape. This is further compounded by the massively growing number of patent filings over the years. This makes it difficult for IP professionals and business leaders to maintain a comprehensive overview of developments in each market and differentiate valuable innovations from the rest. As the global industry evolves, there has been a notable shift from locally concentrated competitors to a broader, more global mix of companies entering traditional spaces. In this swiftly changing environment, the significance of these once-overlooked functions has also evolved. IP teams are growing to become strategic advisors embedded deeply in business operations and long-term planning.  

The evolution of intellectual property departments didn’t happen in a vacuum. The development of advanced platforms like LexisNexis® PatentSight® has helped to fuel an age of data-driven decision-making. By combining quality data and easy-to-understand visualizations, such tools have helped IP departments navigate the complex patent landscape with business-critical insights. And now, with the introduction of LexisNexis® PatentSight+™, continue to push the needle forward on bringing clarity to innovation.  

Here, we take a journey through the evolution of IP analytics. Discovering how insights from patent analytics have grown to help IP teams advise their leaders by providing a wealth of critical business insights, including for competitive benchmarking, licensing negotiations, M&A due diligence, etc. Read on to learn more. 

The beginning of the age of advanced innovation analytics 

LexisNexis PatentSight+ resulted from a university team’s research into trying to answer the “quality problem” concerning patents. This research resulted in a unique approach to measuring patent quality and overall portfolio strength with scientifically developed measurement tools. The early days of PatentSight were a spin-off from this university project. It is in this research that they first introduced the world to the Patent Asset Index, a revolutionary metric that offered a nuanced look at patent quality and value.  

After initial success working on consulting projects for global Chemical industry giants, the founders launched their first Business Intelligence software, PatentSight, in 2012. The platform is based on high-quality patent data and combines Machine Learning with human researchers to maintain high data accuracy standards. By combining world-class data with easy-to-read charts, this approach enabled users to create visually appealing, insight-rich graphs and charts. These tools helped simplify complex IP topics, making them more understandable for stakeholders who do not have an IP background.  

IP teams soon realized the potential of advanced patent analytics and portfolio quality metrics to provide granular insights to guide their R&D strategies, advise on M&A activities, and perform portfolio optimization. Tools like PatentSight enable core IP activities. This includes competitive intelligence and benchmarking, portfolio optimization, and more by bringing together highly curated and enriched datasets, cutting-edge analysis tools with streamlined workflows, and powerful visualization capabilities, all within a single platform. These analytical advances mean that IP teams can focus on more business-critical tasks and perform better under resource constraints.  

In 2018, recognizing its potential to simplify the complexities of the IP landscape as it became more intertwined with overall business strategy, LexisNexis Reed Tech acquired PatentSight and added it to its roster of IP solutions.  

Upscaling the IP department’s role with impactful communication and visual narratives 

One of the less heralded yet crucial components of IP management is communication. Just as IP departments have evolved to become part of a broader business strategy, how they communicate insights and findings has had to advance. In 2021, PatentSight released one of its most impactful features, a revolutionary patent-to-U.N. SDG mapping that reveals insights into the role of innovation in addressing the global challenges of achieving sustainability.  

On a business level, these insights help organizations align their patent portfolios with a universally accepted target, the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. With easy-to-understand charts and graphs that prove a company’s commitment to sustainability, insights from the PatentSight SDG-to-patents mapping have already been leveraged by global leaders like Merck KGaA in their sustainability reports.  

The ability to create impactful visual narratives in a few clicks with easy-to-understand charts and quality metrics that are mathematically proven aligns perfectly with the modern IP department’s need for clarity, agility and adaptability. Below are a few examples of how IP analytics have helped IP departments perform their traditional roles more effectively. And, also to empower them to evolve into strategic units capable of influencing corporate decisions: 

• Competitive intelligence & benchmarking  

• Disruptive technology scouting 

• M&A due diligence and R&D and innovation tracking 

• Sustainable innovation analytics 

• Risk assessment 

• Licensing & SEPs 

From filing cabinets to boardroom staples: Enhancing the IP team with the all-new PatentSight+  

In this era characterized by high-paced innovation, complicated technology overlaps and quicker lab-to-market timelines, we are stepping up the analytics capabilities with the new PatentSight+. This signals a new dawn for IP departments. By harnessing highly curated, enriched data sets and leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and natural language processing with compelling visualizations, PatentSight+ will continue to foster a new era of IP strategy. 

More data, more insights: With the addition of Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) declaration data and expanding the already large patent database with data from additional patent offices, PatentSight+ delivers the most meticulously curated database of patent data. 

AI-powered actionable insights: Last year’s acquisition of Cipher AI has boosted the classification capabilities in PatentSight+. This means more customized and detailed analyses. 

Export and present: This new capability brought to PatentSIght+ allows teams to upload custom design templates and export presentation-ready PowerPoint decks.  

The continuing evolution of intellectual property departments and business interconnection 

It’s evident that the transformation of IP departments and the platforms supporting them, like PatentSight+, is an ongoing process. The interconnection between intellectual property and broader business strategies will continue to strengthen. This will pave the way for a future where the power of IP is harnessed in ways that are yet to be fully explored and imagined. The journey from filing cabinets to boardroom staples is not just a historical transformation. It’s an ongoing narrative shaping the future of innovation and business worldwide.  

Your team may be faced with resource restrictions and looking for ways to improve overall efficiency and quality of communication. We would love to get to know you and show you invaluable insights into how IP analytics can support your team: 

• Let’s have a conversation about your current priorities in IP analytics. 
• Get an external view of your portfolio. 
• Learn how others see you and survey other market players from a new perspective. 

To learn about PatentSight+, schedule a call with us here. 

How a software giant leverages LexisNexis Cipher custom classifiers to understand their competitive landscape

View the story

Unlocking the Competitive Intelligence Hidden Within Patent Portfolios

How a software giant leverages LexisNexis Classification powered by custom classifiers to understand their competitive landscape

Jared Engstrom, Head of Patent Development, talks about the growth in Red Hat’s portfolio, how he has used LexisNexis Classification custom classifiers and how the portfolio optimization model has improved their understanding of the competitive landscape. Jared manages Red Hat’s portfolio, the harvesting of new invention disclosures as well as moving them through the patent process. He is also responsible for the strategy around what patents Red Hat files, how they are maintained and how they are used to protect the company and support the open-source community.

What types of strategic business questions do you need to consider?

You need to understand where your risk is as a company – for many companies, it’s tied to your products and offerings and the revenue you generate. Understanding that risk naturally helps you understand where to build fortifications and defenses.

In our case, we have a patent portfolio used for defensive purposes only and understand where we have risk exposure due to the markets we operate in and what other companies do in those spaces. We need to answer these questions at a fine level of granularity.

How have you answered that kind of strategic business question in the past?

We recently hit an inflection point. As a smaller company over the previous 10-15 years or so, we were largely concerned with building up the size of our portfolio. We also knew we had a handful of key threats out there, so much of our time and energy was focused on ensuring we were well-prepared to defend against those particular threats.

As we’ve hit this inflection point, where we’re a bigger company with a sizeable patent portfolio and in many more markets and tech spaces, we’ve got to have a broader view of patent risk in general. We need to answer questions about our risk and ensure that we align our defensive measures in each of our relevant spaces proportional to the relative risk.

LexisNexis Classification has helped us answer strategic business questions specifically by presenting the data to us in a way aligns with our own view of the world.

LexisNexis’ way of approaching classification is particularly useful because it’s customised to the way Red Hat views the world in terms of technological taxonomy.

What was your approach, and how did that change when Classification was introduced?

We did do an analysis in the past, where we looked at other companies. We assembled a spreadsheet of 100+ companies that we thought either had products that were similar to ours or they competed in some of our spaces. We did a bunch of manual analysis that took us months and months to build, and it gave us some insights about where some of our risks were, but it was static data and hard to update and maintain.

Once we learned about Classification, it was sort of an ‘aha’ moment where we realized that we could dynamically monitor, measure, see trends, and better understand what the world looks like, but do it through our lens, through our taxonomies. Seeing the world through that lens gives us a better ability to act on that information because we are already familiar with it and know it aligns with our business strategy.

How did you find that process of taking your view of the technologies of interest into a Classification taxonomy?

The process was straightforward. We defined the technologies and provided examples of patents that met the definitions for the different technology areas. We were under some time pressure to finish the project before the end of our last fiscal year, and we managed to work through the whole thing in what I think was less than a month. And it wasn’t a full-time effort on the part of the Red Hat team. The Red Hat team certainly put in a lot of time and effort, but the LexisNexis team did all the heavy lifting. It would have taken us several months of nearly full-time effort to do that on our own.

How did you get over the trust and confidence issues required to share that data more broadly inside your business?

Red Hat, as a technology company, understands the value of technology, understands the value of good data and understands the power of artificial intelligence.

We also had quite a bit of our own historical data and manual analysis that we could compare against the Classification results.  So it was fairly easy to get comfortable with the results as the Classification results lined up pretty well with our own.  Cipher also provided insights into things that we weren’t aware of.

You referenced that you got some insights from Classification and the optimization model that maybe you hadn’t been able to access before. Can you talk about that?

In our own manual analysis, we did some exhaustive research on 100+ companies to see what patents they had, their revenue, and their litigation history – all those sorts of data points you need to understand the landscape. But it’s impossible to research every company on the planet, and it’s hard to know whether you’re missing anybody that you should be aware of.

Sure enough, in our post-classification analysis, there were two or three or four companies that weren’t on our radar, and we are now conducting more in-depth research and analysis to understand how those companies might or might not be a risk.  We wouldn’t have known about them if it wasn’t for Classification.

TopBuilt with Shorthand

How an IP law firm leverages LexisNexis® PatentSight® to make complex patent insights consumable by client’s Senior Management.

View the story

McBee, Moore & Vanik IP Leverages PatentSight To Enhance M&A Decision Making With IP Due Diligence Insights

How an IP law firm leverages LexisNexis^® PatentSight^® to make complex patent insights consumable by client’s Senior Management.

“They can now say, OK, I see that figure and I understand what it’s saying, but I also understand how the data created that, and then you can have a much better discussion.”

McBee, Moore & Vanik IP, LLC leverages cutting edge tools to increase efficiency and production for their clients

McBee, Moore & Vanik IP is a boutique law firm based just outside Washington D.C. The firm specializes in Intellectual Property (IP) law, with a focus on biotechnology, chemistry & materials science, medical technology, and pharmaceuticals. The partners provide a full range of patent prosecution and counselling services to corporations and help acquisitive companies understand their relative position in the innovation ecosystem.

McBee, Moore & Vanik IP has long differentiated through its use of advanced technology. The firm went completely paperless back in 2014 and has operated a remote working model since 2016.

C.G. Moore, founding partner, explains the importance of technology to the firm:

“We are very much interested in leveraging technology to let us work from anywhere, increase our efficiency, increase our production, minimize errors. And we’re always trying to improve on those counts.”

---

Business case

When one client came to C.G. for help with IP due diligence for a potential merger, his passion for leveraging advanced technology to improve client service was to prove invaluable.

The objective was to help the client understand its IP value relative to that of its merger target. In addition to the usual due diligence procedures, the client asked C.G. to use PatentSight to see if the IP analytics platform could help provide insight.

Already aware of PatentSight from its use by other clients, C.G. has been waiting for an opportunity to put the platform to the test. Using PatentSight, he and his team were tasked with providing the client’s in-house IP Council with the insights they needed to help their board make a decision on the merger.

“Another client was interested in understanding the relative value of their intellectual property because they were bringing in a lot of patents, they were looking to get acquired, acquire others or generate a lot more IP. Basically, do a lot of different things in the intellectual property space that require an understanding of the relative value of things.”

Chester G. (“C.G.”) Moore, Ph.D., J.D., Partner at McBee Moore & Vanik IP, LLC

Chester G. (“C.G.”) Moore, Ph.D., J.D., Partner at McBee Moore & Vanik IP, LLC

The challenge of delivering patent insights to management

As any IP expert knows, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a patent portfolio can be a time-consuming and laborious affair.
Manual processes require legal teams to comb through large amounts of patent filings, prosecutions, and citations to find the information they need.

In the past, such analysis has been enabled by nothing more than a spreadsheet, making it slow, error-prone, and difficult to scale.

Even once the patent analysis has been completed, presenting insights and findings in a way that is easily understandable by the board can be a challenge.

Without expertise in analytics and IP law, the analysis can be opaque and hard to understand.

“It’s very, very labor intensive, it’s kind of a black box process. Their job then is to take all of this IP voodoo stuff and explain it to their bosses.

So, their bosses are going to say, well, why is this valuable? Why should we keep funding you? ”

As a result, IP analysis has traditionally played an under-valued role in due diligence. This is a lost opportunity for firms, as the value of an IP portfolio can make the difference between whether a firm should consider a merger.

C.G. Moore and his team were therefore challenged to deliver their insights to the clients’ IP Council in a way that both the Council and the management board could see value in and easily understand.

Translating IP language…

…into actionable insights for mergers & acquisitions

“PatentSight helps us think about things differently and expand the conversation.”

C.G. Moore and his team leveraged the PatentSight platform to run a comparative analysis of the client’s IP portfolio and that of its merger target. This analysis assessed and scored the two firms’ patent families against the key performance metrics at the heart of the PatentSight analytics algorithm: Market Coverage^TM and Technology Relevance^TM.

The resulting Competitive Impact^TM score enabled the platform to index the patent families of the two firms and uncover hidden insights into the strategic value of a potential merger.

For C.G., one of the benefits of the PatentSight platform is that it adds a further element to the due diligence process, and gives him and his team intelligence against which they can review and test what they found in their analysis of licenses and prosecution history. As such, PatentSight is an important factor in a complete toolbox through which legal firms and in-house IP Councils can assess the potential value, liabilities, and scope of a merger.

What’s really beneficial about the platform is that it generates a set of clear metrics that make it easier for everyone at the client’s firm to get on the same page – whether IP experts, or not.

Making sense of large volumes of data from disparate sources, PatentSight provided a set of intuitive visualizations of analytical results. In combination with the disclosure of how the results are obtained, that facilitated C.G.’s conversations with the client:

“The difference here is that the methodology has been published and the base assumptions are known. They can now say, OK, I see that figure and I understand what it’s saying, but I also understand how the data created that, and so then you can have a much better discussion.”

---

The simple workflow enabled by PatentSight allowed C.G. to look at the firms IP data in different ways, ask different questions, and repeatedly test assumptions.

And thanks to PatentSight’s simple to grasp visualizations, the client was able to quickly feedback to C.G. where the analysis needed to go deeper and where it could be reined in.

He was thereby able to hone the data analysis on-the-fly to tailor it more exactly to the clients’ needs:

---

As a result of the PatentSight analysis, C.G. was able to identify a number of key insights into the client’s firm and its merger target.

These included

• pertinent information on the relative size of the two company’s portfolios over time,
• relative value of the portfolios over time,
• technology overlaps,
• the pace of patent filings, and
• the relevance of the technologies (i.e. which patents are for important inventions).

The Patent Asset Index^TM score provided by PatentSight shows the exact value, size and potential of portfolios and highlights which patent families were and weren’t protecting assets that would be useful to C.G.’s client.

McBee Moore & Vanik IP and its client’s IP council used PatentSight to reduce highly complex information into easy-to-understand and digestible charts, adding value to the due diligence process and thus helping the client’s management to make a decision on the merger.

---

The result

As a result of PatentSight’s analysis it was clear that IP was the major asset for both the client and the target firm. Consequently , the business was able to make the decision not to proceed with what would have been an unsuitable match.

By providing another view into the risks and benefits of a potential merger, PatentSight can save time and effort, while helping firms allocate resources better and answer the most important questions more thoroughly.

And unlike other solutions on the market, PatentSight is completely transparent. The working of the algorithms and how it reaches its conclusions are open for all to see, so when the platform provides an insight, firms understand exactly how that insight was reached.

This means that lawyers like C.G. can present their conclusions with complete confidence that the analysis stacks up.

PatentSight – A unique approach to IP analytics

Evaluation of technological fit
Objectively evaluate upcoming merger or acquisition targets based on the quality of their technologies, potential risks and technological suitability. The Patent Asset Index™ helps in assessing patent quality and reveals the true strength of the players in technology fields, enabling you to identify the key patents that require explicit attention.

Easy-to-grasp visualizations
PatentSight Business Intelligence helps you effectively communicate your findings with powerful insights and visualizations, enabling you to turn your patent department into a strategic consulting unit.

Transparent approach
The PatentSight methodology and KPIs are entirely transparent. How the algorithm works and how it reaches conclusions is open for all to see, so when the platform provides an insight, firms understand exactly how that insight was reached. The methodology has been published and the base assumptions are known, giving users full transparency.

” We hadn’t seen anything that could do what PatentSight can do not nearly as easily. PatentSight is really quite easy to use, it’s very intuitive.”

C.G. Moore is now a complete convert to PatentSight. In part, this is down to the sheer usability of the platform and the breadth of analysis it enables:

---

Watch the entire interview with C.G. Moore:

Watch Now

---

Download the case study:

Download Now

All Stories  →

TopBuilt with Shorthand

The ability to compete in the market is key to any company’s survival, and many use patents to gain an upper hand. Diligent companies not only focus on their own patent filings but also track their competitors’ filings to help ensure their longevity and prosperity. Below are the top three reasons why all companies should be aware of their competitors’ patent activities.

1. Use competitors’ patent filings to evaluate current investments and future patent rights

Pursuing patent protection is undoubtedly an investment on the part of a patent applicant. Seeing the patent process through is costly in terms of both time and money, so companies rarely take their patent filings lightly. After all, the end goal of pursuing a patent is to obtain patent rights that provide a competitive edge to make an applicant’s investment worthwhile. Because patent application filings are investments that often take years to mature, tracking competitors’ patent filings can be a great way to identify the technologies that the competitor believes will soon provide a commercial advantage.

In other words, keeping tabs on what a competitor is trying to protect provides a glimpse into the competitor’s planned business strategy. Companies that track their competitors’ patent filings can better understand the direction in which the competition is headed and prepare in advance for any patent rights their competitors may ultimately be granted.

2. Use competitors’ patent filings to identify potential patent conflicts

Tracking competitors’ patent filings gives a company the power to take action in the company’s own best interest. If a competitor has filed a patent application for an invention that does not meet patentability requirements, an informed company can challenge the pending patent application by filing a third-party pre-issuance submission. On the other end of the patent process, if a competitor is likely to receive material patent rights, then an informed company can ensure that none of its activities infringe upon those patent rights. It may even be possible for the company to “design around” their competitor’s soon-to-be-granted patent rights so that they can achieve the same results as their competitor without the risk of a lawsuit.

3. Use competitors’ patent filings to better strategize commercial growth

Understanding the direction in which competitors are headed is a great way for companies to avoid falling behind. If the competition is investing heavily in patent protection in a specific technological field, a company may counter by investing in the development of similar, yet non-infringing technologies that will make them more effective in direct competition. Alternatively, tracking the patent filing strategies of many competitors may reveal “white space”—areas where competitors have no patent protection—in which a company can obtain patent protection and their own competitive advantage.

Continually monitoring the patent filings of competitors is advantageous in many ways. Modern patent prosecution tools like the LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® patent analytics platform make it easy to track the competition by providing automated notifications about competitor patent applications. PatentAdvisor™ patent data, patent statistics and patent metrics also can be used to identify which technologies the competition is trying to protect, the likelihood that they will receive a patent and the timeline in which their patents will likely issue. Companies that use PatentAdvisor are empowered to navigate the commercial landscape more effectively and better develop their patent strategies.

See how to Assess Performance and Conduct Objective Comparisons With Patent Metrics.

In addition, the LexisNexis® PatentSight® innovation analytics platform allows users to track the evolution of rival patent strategies, including changes in portfolio sizes and strengths, global filing trends and even the expiration of their most valuable patents.

Learn more about PatentAdvisor.

Learn more about PatentSight®.

Need more predictability in the patent prosecution process?

Learn how to develop successful IP strategies and proficiently manage patent applications throughout the entire prosecution process using data-driven insights and advanced analytics.

Learn More about PatentAdvisor

Whether you work as in-house or outside intellectual property counsel, patent portfolio management tends to be an area ripe for improvement. Managing many patent projects and the work of multiple patent professionals is inherently challenging when you don’t have the right tools. Yet, effective management is crucial when it comes to: (1) ensuring patent applications progress smoothly through patent prosecution; (2) addressing patent performance issues; and (3) helping your company or clients outperform the competition.

The LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® patent analytics platform is best known for providing data and insights to help users devise patent prosecution strategies for individual patent applications. However, PatentAdvisor™ tools can also provide analytics for entire patent portfolios. By combining USPTO patent data statistics with proprietary performance metrics, PatentAdvisor can help intellectual property counsel manage their patent filings, patent attorneys and overall strategies more effectively and efficiently.

Patent application triage

It can be difficult to decide where and when to allocate resources when managing several patent filings. When evaluating a company’s patent portfolio using the PatentAdvisor platform, intellectual property counsel can easily isolate pending patent applications and then use patent analytics and performance indicators to evaluate the performance of each application. Users can leverage patent analytics to identify which patent applications need the most attention (such as those that have been assigned to exceptionally difficult patent examiners or have been pending for an unreasonable amount of time), as well as which patent applications have become too costly and are no longer worth pursuing.

Intellectual property counsel performance evaluations

Evaluating patent portfolios using patent analytics is a great way to identify patent prosecution strengths and weaknesses of individual attorneys—or in specific technological fields. Professionals can use patent statistics and performance metrics to sort out poorly performing patent applications from those that are performing well. This insight can help users identify and address performance issues. International property counsel that rely on PatentAdvisor can identify any underperforming outside law firms or patent attorneys and then provide constructive feedback to improve attorney performance. Counsel can also pinpoint technological areas where patent protection has been difficult to obtain. Knowing this can help them develop more effective drafting approaches and decisions throughout the patent process.

Competitive patent predictions

Running patent analytics on a competitor’s patent portfolio is a great way to obtain actionable competitive intelligence. Intellectual property counsel PatentAdvisor users can sort a competitor’s active patents based on their expiration to identify which of the competitor’s patent rights will terminate soon. Users can also track patent prosecution events for a competitor’s pending patent applications to determine the likelihood that the competitor’s pending applications will mature into enforceable patent rights. Whether tracking a competitor’s existing patents or pending applications, users can develop business strategies that help to prevent patent infringement.

Intellectual property counsel face many challenges that are easier to overcome with patent analytics. From effectively allocating resources in patent prosecution to tracking competitor patent rights, the LexisNexis PatentAdvisor patent analytics platform can help patent professionals extract insights from portfolios that lead to better patent performance.

Learn more about PatentAdvisor. 

Read Patent Prosecution Analytics: No Longer Just a Nice to Have and watch the on-demand webinar for more.

Discover how to compare patent prosecution performances with Benchmarking Reports.

Need more predictability in the patent prosecution process?

Learn how to develop successful IP strategies and proficiently manage patent applications throughout the entire prosecution process using data-driven insights and advanced analytics.

Learn More about PatentAdvisor

Knowing how your business stacks up against your competitors can be extremely valuable. This holds true for all businesses, regardless of whether you operate a technology company or a law firm. An understanding of your relative advantages and disadvantages—benchmarking—provides a framework for building business and a blueprint for operational improvement.

In many industries, the possession of valuable patent rights can determine which businesses have the most success. For patent law firms, the ability to effectively and efficiently prosecute patent applications sets the best patent practitioners apart from the rest. As a result, they can leverage patent data to evaluate company and law firm performance and benchmark performance against their rivals.

The LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® patent analytics platform simplifies the process of comparing an entity’s patent performance to that of its competitors. Performance benchmarking reports, created using PatentAdvisor Business Development & Analysis, package together patent performance statistics, proprietary patent metrics and data visualizations to generate insights in five simple steps.

1. Select Comparison Type

Every journey begins with direction. To embark into the world of patent analytics, PatentAdvisor users need only decide whether they are looking to compare the patent data on multiple companies or the patent statistics of law firms.

2. Select Company or Law Firm

PatentAdvisor makes it easy to import company (i.e., applicant or assignee) patent portfolio data, as well as law firm patent performance data, by tapping directly into the USPTO patent database. Simply type a company or law firm name (or a portion of the name), and PatentAdvisor helps users identify and select the appropriate entity that will serve as the basis for comparison.

3. Select a Date Range

Looking for a complete overview of company patent data? Or perhaps an analysis of recent filings will better suit your needs? Users have the option to evaluate complete patent histories of firms and companies, or they can select specific date ranges to assess patent performance within a chosen time frame.

4. Select Technology Areas

Companies and law firm patents often cover a wide array of technology types. For a more tailored comparison, PatentAdvisor users can limit the scope of their benchmarking reports based on USPTO technology classifications.

5. Select Additional Companies/Law Firms

Finally, once the basic benchmarking parameters are set, users can specify which companies or law firms they would like to include for comparison against the company or law firm initially selected in step 2.

Then, users just click “Generate Report” and receive a data-driven competitive analysis of the chosen entities. PatentAdvisor Business Development & Analysis reports provide side-by-side comparisons of company and law firm patent statistics and performance metrics that reveal how one entity’s patent prosecution efficiency and effectiveness stacks up against its rivals. Users can then leverage the insights to inform their own business and patent strategies.

Learn more about real-time, fully customizable PatentAdvisor Business Development & reports.

Learn more about PatentAdvisor.

Assess performance and conduct objective comparisons with patent metrics, including benchmarking reports.

Need more predictability in the patent prosecution process?

Learn how to develop successful IP strategies and proficiently manage patent applications throughout the entire prosecution process using data-driven insights and advanced analytics.

Learn More about PatentAdvisor

The best patent practitioners are quadruple threats who excel at all stages of the patent process. They provide value to their clients from before the conception of their patentable ideas all the way through patent prosecution. With modern patent analytics solutions provided by LexisNexis® Intellectual Property, becoming a quadruple threat is more attainable than ever for patent professionals.

Identifying opportunities for innovation

Ideas for innovation sometimes arise in unanticipated epiphanies, but most of the time they arise after much diligence and thought. The LexisNexis® PatentSight® innovation analytics platform can be thought of as the engine that generates ideas and strategies surrounding research, development and patent protection strategies. Fueled by a vast database of global patent records and guided by advanced patent metrics and analytics, PatentSight® helps users visualize patent data and find meaning in the patent filing strategies of businesses around the globe. By evaluating competitor patent portfolios and players in emerging industries, PatentSight users can identify market trends and patent white space where there are gaps in a technology landscape that can be capitalized upon.

See how as part of the patent process the PatentSight innovation analytics platform offers multiple tools and patent metrics to help users gain a clear understanding of the sizes and strengths of patent portfolios maintained by companies all over the world.

Conducting patentability research

Identifying market needs and potential competitive advantages are valuable strategies for sparking innovation, but the ability of inventors to protect their ideas depends on additional research and analysis. An invention is only patentable with the USPTO if it is new and nonobvious based on all of the prior art references available in the world. As part of the patent process, a thorough patentability search is the best way to obtain the information needed to evaluate an invention’s patentability, and the insights gained through the patent search process can facilitate better patent drafting.

The LexisNexis TotalPatent One® patent search platform simplifies the patent search process by providing access to millions of patent documents from patent authorities around the world. And because having access to so much information can be daunting to patent searchers, the intuitive TotalPatent One® user interface facilitates several ways to tailor search queries and to filter down search results to only those that matter.

Drafting and reviewing patent applications

Many of the patent application objections and rejections that are issued by USPTO patent examiners can be avoided by meticulously reviewing patent drafts before they are submitted. Unfortunately, the kind of thorough reviews needed to ensure compliance with the many applicable patent procedures and guidelines takes a lot of time (and therefore money) to conduct manually. Thankfully, technology has our backs, and the LexisNexis PatentOptimizer® patent drafting platform can quickly and effectively review patent drafts for compliance with formalities, consistency and many other mistakes that give rise to office actions. Even in situations where office actions are unavoidable, PatentOptimizer® can help identify and recommend ideas for arguments to overcome objections and rejections based on arguments that were successful against USPTO patent examiners in the past.

Explore how to create high-quality patent applications as part of the patent process.

Developing and adapting post-filing strategies

Once a patent application has been filed—when the research and drafting parts of the patent process are things of the past—the application’s future depends on a single patent examiner’s opinion on patentability. Each USPTO patent examiner has a unique background and perspective, along with unique tendencies in evaluating patentability, that can be leveraged by patent professionals to smoothly navigate patent prosecution. Insightful USPTO patent examiner statistics provided by the LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® patent analytics platform, such as an examiner’s allowance rate, the average number of office actions they issue per application and average application pendency times, help patent professionals better understand the individual examiner they are dealing with.

From informing research and development to determining patentability, and from patent drafting through to patent issuance, patent data and analytics can be used to improve the quality of patent services. LexisNexis IP provides analytics solutions for all stages of the patent process to help patent professionals become a quadruple threat and improve the value they provide to their clients.

Explore how to gain innovation insights with PatentSight.

Get quick, precise and reliable results with TotalPatent One.

See how to write high-quality applications with PatentOptimizer.

Bring more transparency and predictability to the prosecution process with PatentAdvisor. 

Optimize your IP workflows and support your business’ strategic decision making

At LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions, we serve corporations, researchers, law firms, patent authorities, universities, and financial services firms through a combination of data, analytics, and cutting-edge technology. We enable you to make informed decisions, increase productivity, reach regulatory compliance, and ultimately, achieve successful results, no matter the goal. 

Learn more

Patent professionals may fail to realize how much value they can add to their clients’ corporate strategies. After all, patent protection is often the centerpiece around which both offensive and defensive corporate strategies are built. The role of a patent practitioner is essential at all stages of strategic research. From broad, general research, including patent landscaping and providing competitive intelligence, to conducting a granular competitor analysis, patent professionals are able to gather and interpret information for clients that is critical for making informed business decisions. 

Competitor analysis: targeting and evaluating rivals

Where patent landscapes and competitive intelligence reports focus on viewing industries, technologies or groups of companies, a competitor analysis aims to produce a profile on a specific rival. More specifically, a competitor analysis is useful for evaluating a rival’s strengths and weaknesses. This rival may be known through their market participation or discovered through previous research efforts. Alternatively, competitors can be easily identified using modern tools like those available on the LexisNexis® PatentSight® innovation analytics platform. PatentSight® users can quickly generate a Smart Report to identify competitors using keywords, IPC classifications and other relevant search criteria. Users can even identify competitors with the PatentSight Similarity Search, which uses patent reference numbers to find similar patents around the world with similar classifications and citations. 

Once a specific competitor has been identified for deeper investigation, PatentSight provides several types of competitor-specific information worth considering, including: 

Patent strength and Competitive Impact

Identifying your rival’s most valuable patents is an important step for determining their strengths and weaknesses. PatentSight uses a science-backed algorithm for evaluating the strength of a patent. The resulting metric, a patent’s Competitive Impact, takes into account a patent’s significance by evaluating how many times it has been cited by subsequent patents, as well as the geographic territories where the patent is protected and the market size of those territories. Users can use Competitive Impact values to make normalized comparisons of patents around the world. 

Portfolio strength and Patent Asset Index 

The strength of a single patent is one thing, but how about the strength of a company’s entire patent portfolio? The PatentSight Patent Asset Index uses the Competitive Impact values of the patents within a portfolio to communicate the portfolio’s overall strength. The Patent Asset Index is ideal for comparing patent portfolio strengths among competitors and providing a reliable metric for identifying changes in portfolio strengths over time. 

Geographic Protection 

Patents are territory specific, so unless your rival has filed for protection with all patent authorities in the world, there will be limitations on where their exclusive patent rights exist. PatentSight intelligence is informed by patent records for over 13 million global patent families filed with patent authorities around the world. Users can use PatentSight patent data to identify the territories where specific inventions are protected and evaluate portfolio strengths in specific geographic regions. 

Patent trends and upcoming changes 

A snapshot of competitor information from a single moment in time leaves much to the imagination. It is when patent data is viewed over time that things start to get interesting. PatentSight allows users to track the evolution of rival patent strategies, including changes in portfolio sizes and strengths, global filing trends and even the expiration of their most valuable patents. By focusing on competitor trends and future expectations, patent professionals can help their clients come up with business tactics that will allow them to better function in their markets. 

PatentSight helps professionals provide corporate strategy services that can lead to greater client successes. Whether it be understanding a market’s landscape, identifying competitors or sizing up a rival, PatentSight offers the metrics and tools patent practitioners need to help fulfill their clients’ needs. 

Learn more about PatentSight and the Patent Asset Index.  

For more on Competitive Impact, read Tesla’s Shares Overtake General Motors’. How do their technologies differ?

For more on the Patent Asset Index read Autonomous Driving: How To Judge Strategic Partnerships. 

Discover the common issues affecting open source patent data and the PatentSight approach to data cleaning. 

This case study shows how an Intellectual Property law firm leverages PatentSight to make complex patent insights actionable by their client’s Senior Management. 

Get actionable insights for strategic decision making

Want to become more effective at managing your patent portfolio, identify worldwide relevant patents and technology trends, assess the competitive landscape, and find partners and licensing opportunities?

Learn More about IP Analytics & Intelligence

Watch the recording

Watch now

As a company with an innovative idea, the only way to avoid being outplayed by the big corporations with a stronger market position is to make sure you play your cards right. “When entering new markets, companies often encounter patent infringements. Simultaneously, big, powerful American and Chinese tech giants are fighting a relentless battle for the ownership of intellectual property. If you want to be a serious player and survive this battle, you need to be properly equipped”, says Didier Patry – CEO at the public-private company France Brevets, which supports French corporations in building a strategic patent portfolio.

An important element of the ‘armor’ that any company with a valuable idea needs is solid, sophisticated strategic patent portfolio management, according to Didier Patry. However, obtaining the full picture requires a lot of insights. You need to know the status of your competitors’ patents, and you need to clearly map out the balance of power. And equally important: you have to be able to compare this to your own patent portfolio and use the data to strengthen that portfolio or complete it if necessary.

The most important, yet most complex, factor in this equation is not quantity, but the quality of the patents. What value do they represent? To determine that value, France Brevets uses the Patent Asset Index™, which is part of the LexisNexis® PatentSight® solution. In this on-demand webinar, Didier Patry shares his most valuable insights.

Competitive intelligence is usually conducted by marketing teams and less often by patent professionals, but why is that exactly? Competitive intelligence results when a company gathers and analyzes information on its industry, the business environment, competitors, and competitive products and services to develop strategies and identify competitive gaps. Patents happen to be one of the most important instruments for maintaining a commercial edge over competitors. Patent professionals are arguably the best suited to identify what is known about competitor patent portfolios and identify the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities that exist in a particular patent landscape. The LexisNexis® PatentSight® innovation analytics platform provides power and ease to patent professionals throughout all phases of the competitive intelligence process and provides the ability to transform patent data into intelligence.

Collecting patent information

Patent data collection for competitive intelligence has always been notoriously difficult. There are over 100 patent authorities around the world, and nearly as many patent databases containing an unfathomable number of patent documents. Considering that many companies file for patent protection using varied name spellings or through their subsidiaries, pooling all of the worldwide patent documents that fall under a single company’s umbrella can be daunting using traditional methods. 

When patent professionals use PatentSight® for their competitive intelligence analyses, they can access patent documents and data for over 13 million patent families around the world. PatentSight records are even reviewed to find ownership inconsistencies and corporate relationships among patent owners to help ensure that users have more complete and accurate patent family information to consider and interpret. 

Transform patent data into intelligence 

The beauty of data analytics is that patent data can be transformed into meaningful information that informs business strategy. PatentSight makes this transformation nearly automatically—all that is required of patent professionals is to choose which data sets should be considered and what kind of information they would like to extract. Choose to analyze patent documents based on ownership information, document text, date ranges, patent authorities, specific IPC classification, and many other conditions. PatentSight can then generate Smart Reports or custom tables and charts that communicate key competitive information. Benchmarking reports can be designed to identify major competitors and patent trends for different technologies. Users can even generate full 360-degree company profiles for their competitors or home in on a competitors’ information in a specific technological field.

Interpreting results and providing counsel 

Once PatentSight produces valuable insights for its users, it is time for patent professionals to interpret what the collected competitive intelligence means for their clients. Not only can patent practitioners identify key competitors, they can also assess competitor portfolio strengths and weaknesses, patent filing trends and the geographic areas where their patents are active. A keen eye can use PatentSight to identify opportunities for collaboration with other businesses, as well as new and disruptive technologies that could present new business opportunities for clients.  

In summary, a business’s leverage over others is often defined by the quality and quantity of its patents. Patent professionals are uniquely qualified to interpret patent information to provide critical competitive intelligence to their clients. PatentSight patent analysis tools help professionals transform patent data into intelligence from global patent archives, and patent professionals can in turn help their clients make better business decisions. 

Learn more about PatentSight and the Patent Asset Index.  

Excellent data quality is the foundation of reliable analyses. Learn how PatentSight enhances patent data here.   

Access the use case Using the Patent Asset Index for Patent Portfolio Benchmarking to see why an in-depth analysis of patent information is irreplaceable when benchmarking the best practices in Intellectual Property management. 

Read Using the Patent Asset Index for Company Portfolio Evaluations to learn how company portfolio evaluations can inform key business decisions. 

Earlier installments in our series on patent data quality covered which fields are most impacted by inaccurate patent data in applications. In our final post, we’re going to discuss a few of the specific instances where bad data can lead to expensive decisions. Because when organizations base critical decisions about how their business operates on unreliable data, those outcomes can be the core driver of negative business results.

One of the main challenges faced by patent information users is the sheer volume of data available for analysis. To put this in perspective, in 2019 there were about 15 million patents in force and in total there are more than 13 million active patent families, as of December 31, 2020, in LexisNexis® PatentSight®. 

With such large volumes of data to work with, the risk of overlooking incorrect or inaccurate patent data increases exponentially. IP departments all over the world use large amounts of patent data for various analyses and studies. It is based on these analyses that management makes strategic decisions about the future, litigations, or mergers and acquisitions. According to a study by the International Bureau at the WIPO, applicant name inconsistencies can cause errors in the findings of any of the following patent analyses, leading to inherently flawed decision making.

Freedom To Operate (FTO) Searches help organizations develop and market products without legal liability to 3rd parties. Inaccurate patent data returned from FTO searches exposes organizations to the potential liability of infringing a patent owned by another company. The cost of defending against patent infringement lawsuits can cost north of 1 million dollars and cases frequently do. If the applicant names in the data that a compmany uses to perform an FTO search contains errors, it becomes an uphill battle for getting their invention patented, from the get-go.

Company Analyses are performed by innovation leaders to evaluate portfolios of companies (especially ones that own large numbers of patents) to accurately strategize their own next moves in terms of mergers and acquisitions, licensing negotiations, or litigation. Imagine deciding to acquire a company based on a patent database that does not contain the correct owner names? That’s going to be a multi-million dollar mistake in the balance sheet.

Portfolio Benchmarking conducted within accurate patent data ownership information, would be an absolute waste of resources. Take the case of Panasonic for instance. In 2008, when Matsushita Electric changed its name to Panasonic Corporation there were 10,00 patents granted under the name of Matsushita Electric. Today, if anybody is benchmarking Panasonic’s innovation prowess based on a patent database in which these patents have not been correctly reassigned to Panasonic, they do not get to see the full picture.

Technology Landscape Analyses shed light on the innovation activity in a specific technology field. This type of analysis relies heavily on ownership information. If all the companies active in a technology field aren’t identified, businesses will miss innovation opportunities to gain competitive advantages.

Each one of the assessments mentioned above is critical to businesses that want to gain data-driven business advantage and mitigate the risk associated with negative outcomes.

Learn more about PatentSight.

Excellent data quality is the foundation of reliable analyses. Learn how PatentSight enhances patent data here.  

Access articles from our patent data quality series:

• 5 Consequences of Patent Data Errors: The Applicant Name Field
• 6 Common Patent Data Errors and How they Affect your Decisions

About the author: Carsten Guderian

Carsten is a Senior Project Leader and has a background in Economics and Business Administration, particularly innovation management and patent analytics. He has been affiliated with PatentSight since 2012.

Companies that fully integrate the management of their patent portfolio into their business strategy are often more successful and run more effective operations. Patent attorney Paul Hylarides believes that patent managers should be given a more prominent role in the boardroom. In recent decades, he has seen the importance of patent data increase dramatically. Globalization and digitization have made patent knowledge the way to determine a strategy, says Paul Hylarides, partner at the Arnold & Siedsma trademark and patent office.

The company has branches in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland and provides legal advice to international multinationals in Europe. Arnold & Siedsma also assists European businesses in patent cases in Asia and the US. Hylarides specializes in computer engineering, medical technology and mechanical engineering.

Strategic outmaneuvering

As a patent attorney, Hylarides regularly has the opportunity to take a look behind the scenes at companies where intellectual property is of paramount importance. Major corporations often have their affairs in order.

These kinds of tech companies monitor competitors’ requests “so they can look into each other’s future,” he says. But also to pinpoint in which direction innovation as a whole is moving. Moreover, they use patent portfolios to protect themselves and strategically outmaneuver the competition.

Simple, cheap and fast

Yet many companies still underestimate the value of patent data. Which is a pity, says Hylarides. The amazing technological progress that has been made in recent years in terms of making patent data accessible and transparent offers enormous opportunities. “Analysis used to be complex, expensive and time-consuming,” says Hylarides. “When I started, I had to wade through CDs containing thousands of documents. Now, thanks to AI, algorithms and various other tools, it’s simple, cheap and fast.”

Ideal portfolio

“How to use patents and why you need insight into the competitor’s portfolio is what’s called strategic patenting,” says Hylarides. “Management has to consider the opportunities, the threats and the direction you want to move in. And then you have to ask yourself: which patent portfolio is the ideal match? Once you’ve determined that, you can look at what’s possible and determine whether, as a company, you have sufficient knowledge to achieve that goal.”

He still doesn’t come across this sequence – determining the strategy and then tailoring your patents accordingly – often enough in practice. Only well-run companies do it. “That’s a missed opportunity,” he says. “Putting together an ideal portfolio is perfectly feasible. You can narrow your search to a defined area, identify what’s missing, and then buy it.”

Operating defensively

Once you’ve put together this kind of portfolio, you can start doing business, says Hylarides. You can stay ahead of the competition. You can accelerate innovation. You can mitigate risks. You enter a market knowing that your competitor has a patent, but you counter it with a patent that causes problems for the same competitor. So strategically speaking you can operate defensively and grab each other by the throat. This is only possible if you know exactly which patents your competitor holds. It’s all connected.”

World stage

Hylarides wants to dispel the notion that the IP race between Europe, Asia and the US has already run its course to the detriment of Europe. While it may be true that the US and China are strong in terms of technology – think of the demise of the European mobile phone industry these past fifteen years – Europe has no trouble keeping up in other areas.

Pharmaceuticals, agri-food and chip machines are examples of areas in which Europe excels. “China files a huge number of patent applications, but the quality is often poor.” However, he also points out that China is wasting no time assuming its place on the world stage. “That shouldn’t be taken lightly. Forewarned is forearmed.”

Change of mindset

That’s why leaders of industry have to change their mindset. Inventors and data analysts have to be moved from the basement and into the boardroom. The importance of IP needs attention at a high level. “In the US, inventors work with management. Europe is more traditional in that respect, which is a pity. Things are beginning to shift here too though. Young people are keen to do business: they go straight from university to launching a start-up. They don’t necessarily want to work for a major corporation anymore. That’s no longer their top priority.”

Contributing to success

He acknowledges that many factors can influence management decisions. But companies that value innovation should give obtaining and managing patents a much more prominent place in their business operations. “If IP managers feel they’re contributing to the company’s success, then that will boost their self-confidence. It will lift them. It would be great if innovative inventions made an impact at the management level more often.”

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about LexisNexis® PatentSight®.
• See how to monitor competitors’ portfolio strengths and developments with PatentSight® benchmarking.
• Learn how excellent patent data quality is the foundation of reliable analyses.
• Explore how PatentSight can assist with portfolio management and optimization.

Get actionable insights for strategic decision making

Want to become more effective at managing your patent portfolio, identify worldwide relevant patents and technology trends, assess the competitive landscape, and find partners and licensing opportunities?

Learn More about IP Analytics & Intelligence

When patent practitioners utilize patent portfolio management software the ways in which patent portfolios can be assembled and analyzed are practically endless. The LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® patent prosecution platform makes it easy for patent professionals to build collections of USPTO patent applications in digital “briefcases” using patent data straight from the USPTO database. Moreover, PatentAdvisor™ users have the advantage of automating their patent prosecution monitoring to keep tabs on the patent applications within their digital briefcases with unparalleled efficiency.

Building patent briefcases to suit your needs

The beauty of digital briefcases is that they allow PatentAdvisor users to run patent analytics on a selection of patents and patent applications. Patent analytics can be performed in aggregate to evaluate the overall performance and health of a patent portfolio, or for individual patent applications to identify those that are performing better or worse than expected. For example, PatentAdvisor empowers users to filter the patent applications within a briefcase by how long they have been pending in patent prosecution, the number of office actions or other actions they have received, the relative difficulty of the assigned USPTO patent examiner, and many other useful patent metrics. 

While users maintain complete control over how they build their patent briefcases, many PatentAdvisor users find the briefcase feature to be especially useful when conducting:

Company and client patent portfolio evaluations—Creating briefcases that contain a single entity’s entire patent portfolio is great for both in-house patent counsel and patent attorneys with major clients. Without the help of USPTO patent statistics and patent analytics, prioritizing pending patent applications can be quite tedious. Sophisticated patent prosecution tools help professionals easily identify which patent applications are in the most need of attention.

Law firm patent performance evaluations—Patent professionals can use patent briefcases to evaluate their law firm’s performance and to work toward better outcomes throughout the patent process. By building PatentAdvisor briefcases that are specific to individual patent attorneys, teams of attorneys or your entire firm, you can evaluate each briefcase’s USPTO patent statistics for weaknesses and identify areas for improvement on many levels.

Competitive intelligence—Law firms and companies often track the competitor’s actions so they can adapt their business strategies to remain competitive. By building a briefcase comprised of a competitor’s pending patent applications, PatentAdvisor users can monitor their competitor’s prosecution progress so they will never be surprised when a patent is granted. Not only can users apply patent analytics to competitor briefcases to benchmark their own performance using competitors as a standard, they can also identify which competitor inventions are most likely to hit the market with patent protection in the future.

Utilizing automated patent pattern monitoring

Once PatentAdvisor users have used digital briefcases and patent analytics to better understand the health of their patent portfolios, they can rely on PatentAdvisor Patent Pattern Monitoring (PPM) to automatically alert them of significant events that impact the applications in the briefcase. Platform users can even tailor alert parameters to their needs using many of the patent metrics offered by the PatentAdvisor patent portfolio management software. For instance, a law firm may wish to receive automated alerts whenever a patent application in a patent portfolio exceeds an office action threshold set by the law firm. A corporation monitoring a competitor’s patent portfolio, on the other hand, may set up automated alerts for any time the competitor’s patent applications receive a Notice of Allowance.

LexisNexis PatentAdvisor patent portfolio management software gives users the ability to easily assess and monitor patent portfolios for a variety of applications. Analyzing and improving patent prosecution performance and developing both business and patent prosecution strategies are all simplified with the PatentAdvisor digital briefcase feature. Then, after users have gained the insights they were seeking using the many PatentAdvisor patent analytics features, PatentAdvisor PPM automates patent portfolio monitoring so users will never miss a beat.

Learn more about PatentAdvisor and see how to compare counsel and companies with patent analytics.

Discover the three reasons companies should monitor competitors’ patent filings.

Read LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® Hidden Gems to Enhance Patent Practices for more.

McBee Moore & Vanik IP LLC is a boutique law firm based just outside Washington D.C. specializing in Intellectual Property (IP) law, with a focus on biotechnology, chemistry & materials science, medical technology, and pharmaceuticals. The firm leverages cutting-edge tools to increase efficiency and production for its clients and enhance M&A decision making, providing a full range of patent prosecution and counseling services to corporations and helping acquisitive companies understand their relative position in the innovation ecosystem.

The primary goal of McBee, Moore & Vanik IP is to provide actionable IP and patent insights to clients. However, when it comes to evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a patent portfolio, the process can be a time-consuming and laborious affair. Manual processes require legal teams to comb through large amounts of patent filings, prosecutions, and citations to find the information they need.

In the past, such analysis has been enabled by nothing more than a spreadsheet, making it slow, error-prone, and difficult to scale. Even once the patent analysis has been completed, presenting insights and findings in a way that is easily understandable by the board can be a challenge. Without expertise in analytics and IP law, the analysis can be opaque and hard to understand.

See how McBee, Moore & Vanik leverages LexisNexis® PatentSight® to make complex patent insights for M&A decision making.

Watch the interview with C.G. Moore, Partner at McBee, Moore & Vanik

WATCH FUll Interview

Provide actionable insights to support strategic decision-making

Effectively communicate the value of your IP with powerful insights and visualizations, enabling you to turn your patent department into a strategic consulting unit.

Taking patent analytics out of the ‘black box’

With LexisNexis® Intellectual Property Solutions, you benefit from a highly transparent scientific approach to patent data analysis. Forget opaque algorithms and analytics ‘black boxes’, we can show you exactly how we reached at our insights. Patent analytics solution, PatentSight®, is built on the foundation of ground-breaking validated research, which is often cited in leading scientific publications.

Brought together in the patent value indicator, the Patent Asset Index™, this objective approach to assessing patent quality and benchmarking patent portfolios has become a de facto standard in measuring portfolio strength.

High-quality data: a prerequisite for reliable patent analysis

LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions validates and quality-assures patent data by assigning patents to their accurate commercial owners and verifying their legal validity and remaining lifetime.

Superior datasets allow you to unveil valuable patent insights and see clearly who wields commercial power over the inventions that underpin promising patents.

What is an IP Landscape?

An intellectual property landscape is a thorough overview of current patents and practices in any technical space. By providing references, documentation, and a holistic view, an IP landscape can show potential for legal validity and inform strategy for design and production of undeveloped products. In short, a patent landscape is a map of everything competing in your area of focus and the current relationships in the field.

The patent landscape can provide a competitive analysis and uncover “white space”, opportunities or unfilled gaps in the current market. Looking at the applicable landscape in the early stages of product development can reveal weaknesses of competitors, advantages you possess, and strongholds or key players that you don’t want to challenge. Detailed examination of the existing scene provides insight into what differentiates your product, establishing focused marketing and transparent communication with investors. This research can also expose what methods have proved valuable and what strategies need adjustment, saving you from known blunders. It is argued that many patents contain information that is not published anywhere else, making an IP landscape the perfect way to obtain new insights in the area of focus.

Pulling a patent landscape starts by looking into a wide variety of relevant data, documents, and information, often found with computer programs or software. Then, real human intelligence is used to narrow down bulk information by sorting it into groups and filtering out irrelevant data. The previously sorted groups are then further examined to find the most important and informative material. The best insight from landscapes is found in the balance of hard data and the story the data tells, meaning a human touch is vital to ensure quality outcomes.

The IP landscape of machine learning from a patent perspective

Depending on the industry and focus, the IP landscape can differ widely, making it all the more important to do landscape research specific to your needs.  A look at the machine learning patent landscape shows that Microsoft and Alphabet currently hold the most – and highest quality – patents. However, the data also shows that leadership positions can change very quickly in this rapidly developing technology field. In particular Chinese companies are among the most prolific filers in this space, nevertheless their patents fall short in terms of impact and quality.

An analysis with LexisNexis® PatentSight® analytics platform using technology fields defined by ip-search, a commercial patent search service provider of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, provides a detailed look at the machine learning landscape from a patent perspective.

With regards to patent filings the field has seen a tremendous growth over the last two decades. From 2000 the number of applications began to pick up, but the rate of growth accelerated from around 2010 and it is unlikely that this has peaked. Over half of all these patents fall under International Patent Classification (IPC) subclasses G06F (Electrical digital data processing), G06N (Computer systems based on specific computational models) and G06K (Recognition of data; presentation of data; record carriers’ handling record carriers).

Portfolio size of machine learning patents by year of first filing

Unsurprisingly, tech companies are at the forefront of the boom. However, in recent years a large proportion of the first filers have originated from China; among the top 20 machine learning patent filers of 2016, the majority were Chinese companies or institutions.

However, a different picture emerges when examining the top 20 patent owners, proving that isolated data is not as clear cut as it appears. When looking to create/develop the full IP landscape, multiple perspectives must be analyzed against each other.  The table below lists the leading companies in machine learning based on Patent Asset Index – a measure for the innovative strength of an enterprise, a specific business area, or an entire technology field – as well as total portfolio size. What is immediately apparent is the drop-off in Chinese companies, with all but one – Baidu – disappearing. So, behind the flurry of Chinese filing activity, there appears to be a lack of quality.

Top 20 owners in machine learning with the highest qualitative strength measured by Patent Asset Index

However, when looking at each company’s total share of the patent market, most are being outpaced by the rate of development of the technology field. Both Microsoft and Alphabet are exhibiting strong growth in absolute terms, but when looking at relative growth, it is only Alphabet that is increasing its share of the field. Other notable names that are growing their share include IBM and Intel.

Share of Patent Asset Index of all machine learning patents for top 10 owners

In terms of those citing Alphabet’s patents in this field, a significant number of established players – such as Microsoft, Qualcomm, Facebook, Amazon and Samsung – make reference to work done by Google’s parent company. So, while Microsoft currently leads the pack, Alphabet is the main company to keep an eye on.

That said, even Microsoft and Alphabet each take less than a 5% share of the field, while the next eight leading players each take between 1% and 2%. In other words, the machine learning field is still relatively nascent and we are far away from a situation where the top 10 companies are way ahead of anyone else. Because any IP landscape is taken as a snapshot at a specific point in time, all landscapes must be continually monitored for accuracy if they are to be used as a reference or seen as an advisor. Thus, we could yet see a dramatic shift in the positions of the leading players or the rise of new challengers in this highly lucrative and competitive space, especially from Chinese contenders.

As a leading global provider of information and analytics, PatentSight shines a spotlight on the innovations of the past and present and help create data-based projections of what the future might hold. Learn more.

The Patent Asset Index of a patent portfolio is defined as the aggregate strength of all the patents the portfolio contains. See how it works.

Get actionable insights for strategic decision making

Want to become more effective at managing your patent portfolio, identify worldwide relevant patents and technology trends, assess the competitive landscape, and find partners and licensing opportunities?

Learn More about IP Analytics & Intelligence

This is the second post in our recently introduced blog series on technology intelligence, where we concentrate on technology-focused competitive intelligence sources, derived from patent analytics. We discuss how scientifically developed patent quality indicators can be used to accurately evaluate innovation efforts and compare innovators in a field from a qualitative perspective. In the previous post, we looked at the technology field of “smart homes” to form a bird’s eye view of the development of patents in this technology over the years. In this entry, we look at individual players in this field and compare the performance of their portfolios against each other. Like this, throughout this series, we used LexisNexis® PatentSight® to analyze the patents that were filed in the ‘smart-homes’ technology and various other technologies, we explain how patent quality is discernibly present, relevant and important for strategic decision-making. Read on to find out how moving away from a volume-based approach towards value-driven innovation management can help you increase business and organizational value.

In the first part of our blog series on technology intelligence, we discussed a technological landscaping chart based on a definition of the technology field “smart homes”, which EconSight GmbH, a swiss-based technology consulting firm, had defined. This primary analysis, focused on the development of the overall portfolio of patents in this field and the portfolio’s Patent Asset Index, over time. We discovered that, countering common views, some patents that can be attributed to this technology already existed 20 years ago. However, we also inferred that there has been substantial growth in this technology with annual single- or double-digit growth in both the key performance indicators (KPIs).

Click here if you would like to read part 1 of this blog series.

Technology intelligence at the industry-level: patents in “smart homes”

While the first technology-field or industry level analysis described in our previous analysis provides us with information that there has been increasing R&D activity and continued growth in firms’ patent portfolio strengths in this field – deeming it interesting for innovation managers considering “smart homes” as a promising technology field – the results did not allow us to form an opinion about the most important firms innovating in this technology space. Zooming in from an industry to a corporate level analysis, we obtain insights on the firms that are the strongest innovators.

Portfolio size trends of individual players

The above chart, developed using quantity-driven patent data, displays the ten companies with the largest number of patents, or patent families to be precise, in “smart homes” on December 31, 2019. For these ten firms, the overall growth rates from 2000 to 2019 vary between 73.37% for Sony to 32,050% for Midea Group. These are astonishing growth rates, but not surprising, given that most of these firms held few to no patents in 2000, resulting in such tremendous growth rates with a fractional increase. In fact, Xiamoi had its first “smart homes” patents in 2001, Midea Group and Haier entered the space in 2002, whilst State Grid Corp had their first “smart homes” patents in 2004 and Gree Electrical Appliances only in 2006. In 2000, the only companies out of the top 10 to own more than 100 patents in this technology were, Sony with 184 and Panasonic with 350. In terms of annual growth, no real universal or consistent trend is detected. While Haier experienced continuous double-digit growth rates with the exception of 2005, and Samsung experienced relatively stable double-digit annual growth rates that only dropped to single-digit growth rates in 2009, ’10 and again from 2012-14, other firms were subject to more fluctuations. LG’s portfolio, for example, grew from 2001 to 2007 and 2011 to 2014 – with single-, double- and in the early years even three-digit annual growth rates, but also declined in the remaining years, for example in 2009 by 21.64 percent. It is interesting to note that for firms with fluctuating positive and negative growth rates, crowding out effects occur, which also affect the overall growth rates mentioned above.

Learn more about PatentSight and the Patent Asset Index.

Excellent data quality is the foundation of reliable analyses. Learn how PatentSight enhances patent data here.   

For more on innovation management and technology intelligence read Value-Driven Innovation and Intellectual Property Management.

About the author: Carsten Guderian

Carsten is a Senior Project Leader and has a background in Economics and Business Administration, particularly innovation management and patent analytics. He has been affiliated with PatentSight since 2012.