Having invested heavily ($500 million) in the Michigan based e-mobility startup, Rivian, and announcing a partnership with Volkswagen to investigate possible collaboration in developing electric vehicles (EVs), Ford is shaping up to be a formidable player in the already fast-growing EV market. It was also reported recently that Lincoln, which is Ford’s luxury car brand, is already developing a new fully electric vehicle in partnership with Rivian set to be released some time in 2022. Ford is sending clear signals to the market that they are ready to tackle the changes that are coming to the automotive industry in the form of digitalization. With the increased adoption of digital technologies by the auto industry set to change the way we drive, Ford is rapidly innovating to come up with safer, cleaner and cheaper modes of transport.

In November 2019, EconSight - a Swiss based consulting and research company, conducted a study of the Top 100 Digital Innovators. This ranking was created using LexisNexis PatentSight to analyze patents owned by global companies that are leaders in innovation in the digital space. This study revealed that Ford’s consistent efforts in innovation have resulted in their ranking being improved five spots, within a year. They lead the rank hierarchy in autonomous driving, closely followed by the VW group, Toyota Motor and Bosch.

Following the lead of this study, in order to understand more about technology adoption in the automotive industry, we conducted further analyses - comparing Ford’s portfolio to that of Volkswagen, Alphabet and Apple, who are also active in the automotive space. To maintain consistency, the analysis was limited to patents owned by these companies that relate to a combination of classic and digitalization technologies to be used in automobiles.

Doubling portfolio size while maintaining quality

Alphabet Inc, headquartered in Mountain View, California, was created through a corporate restructuring of Google in 2015, when it became the parent company of Google and several of its former subsidiaries. With sales of $117.9 billion and a profit of more than $16 billion, the tech giant currently ranks 17^th among the world's largest companies according to Forbes Global 2000. We investigate a status quo of the company’s patent landscape using our industry proven patent evaluation metric, the Patent Asset Index™ and our Business Intelligence Platform PatentSight.

From recent news reports it became clear that China accounts for almost 90% of the world’s production and supply of the so-called Rare Earth Elements (REE). These are a group of 17 elements that are not commonly found in the earth's surface. For e.g. Scandium, one of the rare earth elements, is heavily used in manufacturing parts for the aerospace industry. Similarly, these elements have varied and extremely specific uses, for which, at least for the time-being, no viable substitutes can be sourced. We used our excellent patent database and scientifically proven metrics to analyze the current situation around rare earth elements from a patent quality point of view to identify possible opportunities and threats in this business.

The payment card industry (PCI) encompasses organizations and institutions that store, process and transmit cardholder data, with major brands such as American Express, Mastercard Inc, Visa Inc and others. In this blog post, we provide insights into the competitive environment of the PCI with a focus on American Express, with regard to patent holdings. Using our industry-proven, scientifically validated Patent Asset Index™, we find that the company has fallen behind its competitors despite a constant patent portfolio development.

Recently, we applied the PatentSight Patent Asset Index methodology to gain a new insight into which of Israel’s research bodies are leading in innovation. The index assesses the strength of an organization’s patent portfolio in terms of quality of patents held measured by TechnologyRelevance™ and Market Coverage ™. So, what did we find?

End of February 2019 Samsung revealed its long rumored smart phone with a foldable display, the first of its kind to have an official release date. A number of players have been rumored to be working on such devices, however Samsung’s combination of in-house smartphone and display technologies may have led to it being first to market.

A closer look at the innovation landscape and the qualitative strength of the patent portfolios in the field of foldable smartphone technology shows the enormous lead Samsung has and the areas in which Apple has to catch up.

In January of this year, U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) and Celgene Corporation announced they had entered into a definitive merger agreement for BMS to acquire Celgene.

The stated aim of the merger is to create ‘a premier innovative biopharma company’ with a particular focus on building an expanded offering in the cancer and immunotherapy space. If completed, the transaction is expected to cost $74 billion in a cash and stock deal, whereby Celgene shareholders will receive 1.0 BMS share as well as $50 in cash for each share of Celgene.

Our analysis of the two firms’ respective patent portfolios provides insight into how this merger would affect the U.S. pharma market. For this analysis, we employed our Patent Asset Index^TM methodology, which scientifically assesses patent families against Key Performance Indicators of Technology Relevance^TM and Market Coverage^TM.

With the acquisition of Maxwell Technologies, Tesla expands its patent portfolio and includes technologies that may lead to a major advantage in the future technology of efficient batteries for electric cars. The company is a specialist in the field of energy storage. For Tesla this can mean a leap forward in the highly competitive field of battery technology for electric cars. A closer look at this acquisition scenario shows us in which technology areas Maxwell can significantly complement Tesla's patent portfolio.

For a study commissioned by IAM, PatentSight has taken a closer look at the patenting activity of leading universities and research centers based on the Patent Asset Index^TM.

In 2011 faced with “the impending loss of patent protection on certain leading products”, the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company unveiled its mid-term plan to achieve sustainable growth. Over the 10 years prior to this Takeda had pruned its patent portfolio significantly from over 3500 patent families in the year 2000 to less than 1900 in 2008, saving the company millions of dollars over the lifetime of these patents. Whilst such cost saving measures would have reduced the company’s liabilities, this alone would have not ensured long-term prosperity. Enter the “New Takeda”.