In the World of Innovation

In the World of Innovation
5/19/2009 11:46:38 AM

In rapidly evolving, IP-rich industries, it is essential to thoroughly understand your company’s patent portfolio and its’ relationship to your products, technology and global marketplace.

From a microeconomic perspective, your portfolio needs to be compared to competitors’, customers’ and suppliers’ portfolios to understand how technology innovation is evolving and to forecast future competitiveness. However, from a macroeconomic perspective, there are broader industry questions which can affect your company’s success such as – where is the innovation coming from in your industry – from which companies, countries, and cities? Patent Analytics is one methodology that provides insight into value and strategic fit in an industry. While IP professionals often talk about the ability of Patent Analytics to identify gaps, “hot spots” and emerging technologies at a microeconomic level, we often forget that the macroeconomic trends established from Patent Analytics can also speak to national competitiveness and global patterns of innovation. The macroeconomic data provides a refreshing look at the “big picture,” something that can also serve as a global innovation roadmap for any technology driven company.

Top 10 Countries Patenting in the U.S.
In last month’s issue, we turned to the end user of patent analytics to discuss the value they may receive from patent analytics and took a high level view of the needs of investors, law firms, Fortune 1000 companies, governments and new ventures. In today’s article, we will take a glimpse into the top patent innovators – from countries, cities and companies that are represented – where they rank and what some of our leading indicators tell us about how the countries and companies really measure up. In short, we will look at the total U.S. utility patenting activity and compare that to what impact the countries’, cities’, and companies’ patent portfolios have on the world at large.

Top 10 Global Cities Patenting in the U.S.
The U SA, as a country, has led in total patenting over the past twenty years. The 2008 Top 5 cities leading in U.S. patenting are San Jose, California (4,212 patents); Sunnyvale, California (2,180 patents); Austin, Texas (1,923 patents); Palo Alto, California (1,766 patents); and San Diego, California (1,735 patents). When we focus on cities globally the top patenting city is Tokyo, Japan receiving U .S. utility patents totaling 6,535 which is a 36% lead over 2nd ranked San Jose, California, USA.

World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2008
The Patent Board measures patent-based innovation in their annual round-up of corporations ranked by their quality-based indicators. This year’s industry-by-industry Patent Scorecard ranks companies by their overall broad industry view of technology strength or science strength and also tracks numerous other patent metrics including the sheer volume of patents they hold at a unified company level as well as the impact their patents are having on other patented technology for 17-industries. The data is for the calendar year ending December 31, 2007.

Measuring Patent Based Innovation: The 2008 Patent Scorecard™
Driven by trends in globalization and the ever quickening pace of competition, businesses are placing greater emphasis on Intellectual Property (IP) and innovation. Patent-based IP is a driving force in determining not only corporate, but regional and national economic success. In a 2007 BCG survey on current and future innovation spending, two-thirds of executives said their companies would increase year-over-year spending, with one in three expecting the increase to be more than 10 percent. Samsung Group leads the pack by just over 2% in patents granted and displaced the long time patenting leader IBM for the first time in 2007 by receiving 3,237 patents. That was eighty more patents than IBM’s granted patents total of 3,157 patents for 2007. Samsung Group is marketing that they are “making historic advances in research and development of our overall semiconductor line, including flash memory and non-memory, custom semiconductors, DRAM and SRAM”. Samsung Electronics, the largest of Samsung Groups division, remains one of the world’s “Top 10” in U .S. patents for four consecutive years, starting from just one patent in 1973 and rising to 2,785 patents in 2007. While they boast 13,000 researchers representing a U.S. $1.7 billion investment in Research and Development (R&D), Samsung’s investment in R&D may not be paying off as much as they would hope. The impact of their portfolio on the world marketplace indicates that they are patenting heavily, but still lag compared to other top innovation driven companies.

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