Patent Market Tracker Fall 2015 Key Trends

Transcription

1 Patent Market Tracker Fall 2015 Key Trends

2 Contents Executive Summary... 3 Patent Acquisitions... 4 Top Segment Mover: Chemistry... 6 Top Segment Mover: Computer Hardware... 7 LinkedIn Buys Big... 8 Patent Market Tracker: Unprecedented Insight What is Patent Market Tracker?... 12

3 Executive Summary This white paper gives an update on US patent purchases and sales in the first seven months of 2015 by analyzing Innography s Patent Market Tracker (PMT). It uncovers trends in the patent marketplace including which technologies were transferred and key players both selling and buying patents. Companies monitor patent purchases because they indicate a likelihood of new products or enforcement actions using the purchased technologies. Enforcement and validity of US patents is in flux due to the Supreme Court s Alice v. CLS Bank decision and several other patent-related decisions last year, and the increasing and highly successful patent challenges in front of the new Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). However, this hasn t affected the volume of US patent sales, which continues its roughly 10% per year increase over the last several years. PTAB hasn t affected the volume of US patent sales, which continues its roughly 10% per year increase over the last several years. If there is one word to sum up the driver of which technologies saw increasing patent sales so far this year, it is batteries. The sectors that had increasing patent sale volume were Chemicals, Computer Hardware, and Electronics. The only decreasing sector was Telecommunications, which went down significantly. Finally, among new players in patent purchases this year, LinkedIn stands out with its purchase of 799 US grants and applications from IBM. This purchase more than doubles LinkedIn s patent portfolio and gave it strong patents across a variety of computer software technologies, and other interesting areas as well. Innography provides this summary update to PMT trends twice per year. For additional analysis or the full PMT data set, which is updated each month, please contact Innography at pmt@innography.com. 3

4 Patent Acquisitions Many suspected Alice would greatly diminish patent purchases because it would make some software and business method patents unenforceable, and had increased uncertainty from shifting IP law. The volume of patent transfers after the Supreme Court decision shows these fears to be unfounded. Patent Market Tracker data shows that patent transfers after the decision in June 2014 continue to increase, up about 10% from the same time last year.* Figure 1: Aggregate Patent Transfer Volume * Based on the 3 month moving average of patent transfers observed 07/14 & 07/15. 4

5 Patent transfers across most technologies have grown at the overall rate, with a few notable exceptions. Chemicals, Computer Hardware, and Electronics compose a larger proportion of patent transfers so far in 2015 than in 2014, while Telecommunications patent transfers have been markedly fewer. Figure 2: Change in Proportion of Transfers To find out which companies are driving the changing focus of IP transfers, Innography mapped patent class codes to Sectors, and then identified the top Buyers (assignees) and Sellers (assignors) in the reassignment record. For this report, we ve focused on two of the segments that increased in 2015, Chemistry and Computer Hardware. 5

6 Top Segment Mover: Chemistry The biggest purchasers of patents in the Chemistry segment (which includes Chemistry, Chemicals, and Physics) so far in 2015 were Chemours (15.3%), Porsche (8.6%), Google (1.1%), and Intermolecular (1.3%). The Chemours patent transfer is the result of the spinoff of the Performance Chemicals division of DuPont into the Chemours Company. Given Chemours rocky start, players in the disinfectants, titanium dioxide, and fluoropolymers technology areas should monitor this portfolio for licensing or enforcement. Figure 3: Top Buyers in Chemistry, Chemicals & Physics class Ballard Power Systems sold 350 patents to Porsche related to Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) technology including two patents for ceria-based catalysts, which remove the dependency on platinum and result in substantially cheaper devices. This investment in PEMFC technology signals, at a minimum, a hedging against electrochemical batteries like the lithium-ion cells used in Tesla s vehicles. Interestingly, most of the patents that Ballard sold to Porsche were originally filed by United Technologies Corporation. Ballard kept fewer than 30 of the battery-related patents they acquired from UTC. Google also has battery-related patents that they acquired when they purchased Motorola Mobility. Like Porche s purchase from Ballard, these patents relate to fuel cell technology enhancements, with a mix of general fuel cell enhancements, and others that are directed towards consumer electronics. Intramolecular s portfolio, originally developed by the University of California, was acquired and further enriched by Symyx. Symyx later split into Accelrys and Freeslate. Freeslate remains operational, and Accelrys was acquired by Dassault Systems under its Biovia line. These patents are likely to be encumbered, and are carrying broken chains of title. It will be interesting to see if, in fact Intramolecular will apply this technology to material science research in the semiconductor field; especially High-k metal gates and 3D integrated circuits. Figure 4: US 5,432,017 Innography Advanced Analysis subscribers can get access to the full details on this sector s buyers, sellers, and transferred patents in an interactive chart by contacting pmt@innography.com. 6

7 Top Segment Mover: Computer Hardware Socionext (30.6%) and Japan OLED (10.1%) led the Computer Hardware surge, followed by LinkedIn (6.3%), Apple (4.1%), and Intel with 3.4%, of patent transfers in the first half of SocioNext (a Fujitsu-Panasonic joint venture) and JOLED (INJC, Sony, Panasonic) are new joint ventures to which the founding companies are contributing IP assets. Socionext will make system-on-a-chip designs for video, peripheral buses, and general purpose logic, while JOLED will produce medium size organic-led screens for use in tablets and laptops. Apple s acquisitions are from numerous sources including STMicroelectronics, Privaris, Zenith Investments, Zozo Management, Applied Minds, Nexolve, Verdiem, Lapis Semi, and Guided Therapy. The reassigned patents cover a number of technologies such as biometric authentication and flash storage. Intel has also acquired patents from a variety of sources, including Aeopona, Avago, Corel Software, Freescale, Lemoptix, and LSI in data storage and networking. 7

8 LinkedIn Buys Big At Insights 2015, Innography analysts dissected the Facebook portfolio, and used PMT data to show how patent purchases are a major part of Facebook s patent strategy with very large purchases from AT&T, IBM, Fujifilm, New Aurora, Verizon, et al. Continuing the trend of major social media players acquiring patents, the latest PMT data shows a large transfer from IBM to LinkedIn. LinkedIn Transfers LinkedIn has traditionally focused on acquiring companies: two in 2012, four between 2013 and 2014, and another four so far in Patent purchases have been much rarer, with only two purchases in 2014 of 51 total patents from Allied Security Trust (2), AT&T (13), and Cisco (36). In March 2015, LinkedIn made a major purchase of 799 US patent applications and grants from IBM, the first large patent purchase in LinkedIn s history. Based on LinkedIn s litigation activity to date about 9 new defense cases per year against non-practicing entities (NPEs) this move may simply be to keep problematic IP from falling into the wrong hands. The purchase also more than doubles the size of LinkedIn s patent portfolio. Figure 5: Transfer Volume by Assignor 8

9 Technologies Purchased by LinkedIn The acquired portfolio consists of 799 patent applications and grants primarily related to Computer Software (48%), Computer Hardware (32%), Telecommunications (7%), and the remaining 188 (13%) in other technology sectors. Advanced Analysis subscribers: Dive into the LinkedIn-IBM patent transfer. Figure 6: PatentScape of Transferred Technologies from IBM to LinkedIn Based on the PatentScape analysis above, the majority of these patents seem to relate directly to delivering existing LinkedIn talent, marketing, and subscription products. A minority (30%) are potentially new LinkedIn products and technologies, such as wireless signal management, LCD substrates, semiconductor circuit design, and optical discs. These and other acquired patents may be held to protect unannounced products or may be sold or otherwise monetized. 9

10 Impacts As a result of this transfer, LinkedIn now controls patents which are heavily cited by rivals and NPEs. Looking at the forward citations for the purchased portfolio, Fortune 100 high-technology companies are the primary citers. Microsoft is the leading citer of this portfolio (with 14% of citations), followed by Oracle, Google, SAP, HP and Apple. See the graphic and table below for the top citing companies of LinkedIn s purchased patents. Figure 7: Heat Map and Table of the biggest citers of the LinkedIn acquisition. 10

11 Citer Cites (%) Cites (n) Microsoft 13.96% 1776 Oracle 7.50% 954 Google 4.25% 541 SAP 4.07% 518 HP 3.00% 382 Apple 2.68% 341 IV 2.23% 284 Hitachi 1.60% 204 Intel 1.57% 200 Fujitsu 1.26% 160 Samsung 1.18% 150 AT&T 1.12% 142 Amazon 1.03% 131 EMC 0.97% 124 Blackberry 0.91% 116 Red Hat 0.84% 107 Voxer IP 0.84% 107 Sony Corporation 0.79% 100 Cisco Systems, Inc. 0.67% 85 Qualcomm, Inc. 0.66% 84 Yahoo! Inc. 0.65% 83 The citers above show that LinkedIn s patent purchase from IBM covers technologies of interest to many of the most innovative players in software today, elevating LinkedIn s status as an IP owner in the computer software industry. The full details of the purchased LinkedIn patents are available to Innography Advanced Analysis subscribers. 11

12 Patent Market Tracker: Unprecedented Insight What is Patent Market Tracker? Patent Market Tracker (PMT) is a monthly update of cleansed patent sale and purchase data for US patents and applications. Purchased patents indicate a near-term interest in the covered technology, either for monetization through licensing, protection of current and future products, or negotiating leverage. Purchased patents also indicate litigation risk they are 2.2 times as likely to be involved in litigation as US patents overall. As a result, companies should monitor patent purchases to understand who is interested in commercializing products or monetizing patents in a technology area. The patent purchase information from the USPTO is in separate data feeds than the patent filing data, it is difficult to process, and it is littered with extraneous entries, misleading data, and errors. Less than 15% of the records are true inter-company transfers, for example. PMT cleans and organizes the data set to offer unprecedented insight into the buyers and sellers of US patents, the most traded technologies, and the opportunities and risks these transfers represent. PMT combines 12 different algorithms and filters to make visible the trends and concrete transactions from a noisy and messy data set, including Innography s market-leading company normalization engine. Interested in a deep analysis of a specific segment using our Patent Market Tracker? Please contact us at pmt@innography.com or About Innography Innography provides patent search and intellectual property analytics software that helps the world s leading patent owners, innovators and decision-makers drive more business value from IP investments. Correlating 100 million patent documents with financial, litigation, market and business data, Innography helps clients track competitors, uncover lucrative revenue sources, pre-empt litigation risk and stay abreast of innovation trends. With more than 350 global clients across all product industry categories, Innography is proud to achieve customer satisfaction far above the industry average. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Innography is a CPA Global company. info@innography.com Innography is a registered trademark and CustomStrength, IP AnswerGuide, InnSpect, PatentGuard, PatentIQ, PatentScout, and PatentStrength are trademarks of Innography, Inc. Innography disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.