The client, a Japanese chemical company was interested in understanding the strength of each of the patents in their patent portfolio to make a decision on their renewal. The client also wanted to compare / contrast the methodology used by SPA against other techniques.
Problem & Context:
SciTech Patent Art Approach & Deliverables:
- Based on extensive literature search, the SPA team developed a simple and transparent approach for assessing the strength of a patent:
- Identified key quantitative parameters (e.g., backward and forward citations, family members).
- Developed a simple methodology to compare each parameter versus other relevant peers in the same IPC/CPC class.
- Calculated a strength for each patent and compared patents in the portfolio on a 2-dimensional chart with strength as one axis and remaining life of the patent as the other.
- SPA’s method was benchmarked against another widely accepted competitor and it was shown that SPA’s simplified method performed as well as the competitor’s technique.
- The client determined that SPA’s method is more transparent and easy to tailor to client’s business requirements. This led to the client’s adoption of this technique for evaluating the portfolios of many other competitors.
The analysis took approximately 2 weeks and costed $5,000