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6th July 2017

Expert Advice: Innova Partnerships

Understanding the Patent Landscape

Innovation is a critical component for companies across the life sciences sector.  Defining and protecting this innovation through intellectual property rights (IPR), such as patents, trademarks and design rights is also a key activity as companies seek to commercialise these innovations.

As business assets, IPR have been misunderstood and generally poorly communicated to wider stakeholders such as investors and Board members within a company who are perhaps not part of the core technical team.  Patents especially have historically been viewed as complex and costly.

This perception is changing.  Although internally generated IPR cannot be included on a company’s balance sheet, it is widely reported that at least 70% of the enterprise value of innovation-based businesses resides within intangible assets, including patents.  The World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), reports that there are more than 50m IPRs in force throughout the world and that in 2015 alone, 2.9m patent applications were submitted globally.

There has been a sustained increase in patenting activity over the past few years and this has led to a consequent rise in associated business events, including licensing, sale, litigation, mergers and acquisitions and even securitisation of patents.

To ensure companies are able to act knowledgeably and effectively across these types of transactions, there is a clear and growing imperative for greater understanding and use of these increasingly important business assets.

More and more organisations therefore are utilising new and increasingly sophisticated data analytics tools to develop a greater understanding of their IP portfolios.  Analytics companies use data from worldwide patent offices to create vast networks of patents which are then analysed using techniques such as machine learning artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing and novel algorithms.

The analysis that these tools provide can help companies of all sizes better understand the IP landscape in their sector and support the development of more effective IP strategies and management decisions:

  • Portfolio activity; applications, grants, expirations, licenses
  • Competitor analysis
  • Transaction activity; litigation, licencing, M&A
  • Technology landscaping
  • Patentability, freedom to operate and location of prior art

Innova Partnerships Ltd is working with a young US company, PatentVector™ LLC, who have created a novel data analytics platform which utilises powerful, objective and award-winning proprietary technology to analyse the importance, value and natural technological classification of the worldwide patent system.

The company have created one of the world’s largest data networks from the global patent system to be able to analyse information on over 130m patents and patent applications.  This provides a rich seam of information to help companies understand and interrogate their patent portfolios and to make better informed IP business decisions.

Uniquely, PatentVector™ not only allows the determination of the importance of any patent, but also offers an objective approach to estimating patent value.

If you would like to find out more, contact Paul Meakin of Innova Partnerships.