The Art of Patent Landscaping

II-SDV - Nice

Aalt van de KuilenApril, 18th 2016

Definitions

Patent landscape reports provide a snap-shot of

the patent situation of a specific technology or

company, either within a given country or region,

or globally.

WIPO definition

Why?

Patent Landscapes can give an overview of

technology sector

competitors

economic value of patent portfolios

strategic position

Impact of Patent Landscapes on R&D:

shorten R&D time by 60%

save R&D costs by 40%

Limitations

Very important:

Be aware that not all companies, active in a market, have

a similar patent filing strategy

Example TESLA (hardly any patents on electric cars)

Before we start

Before starting the Patent Landscape it is

important to know the reason for creating a

patent landscape!!!

Every Landscape has a purpose why it has to

be created!!

Creating a landscape

Don’t underestimate how difficult it can be to create

a landscape

Do not underestimate time needed to plan and

execute a landscape!!

Step 1: Ask for the reason for creating this landscape

The purpose for the landscape has impact on what

decision(s) is/are going to be taken based on the

information. impact on the scope!!!

Step 2: Become familiar with the topic

Before you start you have to become familiar with

the topic by reading some general articles or

reviews.

Step 3: Considerations before starting the search

a) Patent families

b) Citation search

c) Patent assignee names

d) Classifications

e) Regions

f) Broad or small topic

a) Patent Families

What is the most useful patent family structure for

landscaping

Databases have different definitions

Most used are 2 definitions

Extended families INPADOC (about 89% is based on one priority!)

Strict families WPI, Espacenet.(100% based on one priority)

Citation analysis can give additional records. (be

aware of different policies especially between EU

en US)

A manual check is needed.

b) Citation search

No standardization of company names.

Manually corrections are necessary!

Helpful

Corporate Trees (most providers have one)

Derwent Company Codes ( Link )

Standardization initiatives (Univ. of Leuven)

KUL/EUROSTAT: Method for harmonizing applicants names

c) Patent assignee names

d) Classifications

Absolutely necessary. Keywords only is insufficient and will miss a lot of records,

especially in new technologies.

A global classification system is most preferred, like IPC and CPC.

Warning 1: Not all documents have a CPC ,10-30% of the families

do not have a CPC assigned, mainly records coming from Japan,

China, Korea and Russia.

For details about coverage see the CPC website www.cpcinfo.org

Warning 2: be aware that not all relevant documents are classified

correctly!

e) Regions

Which countries do you want to include depend on

the topic!!

1. Where are the main competitors located?

2. Are all technology areas as important for all regions?

3. For some countries it is hard to retrieve patent

information

f) Broad or small topic

Broad topics are seldom useful for landscaping.

Topics like:

Pharma industry, Green energy, Automotive industry,

Nanotechnology are distributed over several classes and

hard to retrieve

Small topics, within a small set of classes, are more

reliable for landscaping.

Step 4: Search

Most critical step!

Broad approach is most often the best!(Include both classes and keywords)

Which database(s)??(be aware documents missed at this stage will

never show up later!!)

Step 5: Clean up

in order to create a reliable landscape

80-90% relevancy is required

Sometimes a manual clean-up is necessary

Step 6: Checking the dataset

Check whether or not your set make sense.

Look if some key patents are included in the set.

Step 7: analyzing, visualization and reporting

Many tools are available for analyzing the data . Choose

the tool that fits best for purpose

Visualize only global trends and not specific data. Too

detailed reports will not be read.

The most important part of the report is the summary!! (most clients do not read more than the summary page)

Summary(How to create a patent landscape in 7 steps)

Step 1: Ask the reason for the landscape

Step 2: Become familiar with the topic

Step 3: Considerations before starting the searcha) Patent families

b) Citation search

c) Patent assignee names

d) Classifications

e) Regions

f) Broad or small topic

Step 4: Search

Step 5: Clean up

Step 6: Checking the dataset

Step 7: Analyzing, visualization and reporting

Example

Tsunami Warning systems

Your company wants to develop a new Tsunami

Warning System. Before starting, they want to know

what is already available on the market, who are the

competitors and what described in IP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami_warning_system

To become familiar with the topic Wikipedia is

often a good source

Gives, in this case, the very important

information that a tsunami is an earthquake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Considerations and search

Classifications

Citations

Database selection (more than one?)

Proposed choices

Text search: example!!

Most probably in Title and abstract and claims

(earthquake) w5? (warning or alarm)

Most probably in full text

(tsunami) w5? (warning or alarm)

Classifications: example!!

(CPC=(G08B21/10 or H04W4/22 or G01V1/008 or H04W76/007 OR

H04W4/06 OR H04W76/002 OR H04W68/00))

or (CPC=NO (records with no CPC)! and (IPC=G08B21/10 or G08B21/00 or

G08B27/00 or G01V1/00 or H04W/22 OR H04W4/22 OR H04W4/06

OR H04M11/04 OR G08B27/00))

Possibilities for data clean up

Exclude old documents

Exclude Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean records with

only one family member (or other less relevant countries?)

Exclude German Utility Models, with only one family

member DEU

In this case, at this stage, approx. 2000 records

Further limitations and clean-up based on the

scope/purpose of the landscape!!

Analyzing, visualization and

reporting

After having created the set, there is no preference in the

tool used for analyzing and visualization

Be sure the report (and even the summary) gives answers to

the questions that has been asked.

Conclusion

Patent Landscaping is complex and time consuming!!

Patent Landscaping has it’s limitations

www.patentinformationservices.nl