How much do you know about these three types of patent rankings？

Text/Li Changfeng Wu Wei China Patent Technology Development Company

In the era of knowledge economy, whether it is the change in the proportion of intangible assets among the 500 companies in the Standard & Poor’s Index of the United States, or the frequent patent wars on smart phones and a large number of patent acquisitions in recent years, it shows that patents have become an important asset of enterprises, a key factor of production, a protagonist of trade, a sharp weapon of competition, and a source of power to drive enterprises to last forever. By comparing and measuring the scale and quality of patent portfolio owned by enterprises, we can clearly and accurately analyze their technical strength, innovation ability and even competitiveness.

The patent strength rankings based on a series of objectively quantified patent statistical indicators, such as the Wall Street Journal Patent Scorecard, the IEEE Patent Strength Scorecard, and the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Innovative Institutions Ranking, provide a common comparison stage for all kinds of innovative entities at the technical level, which will cause great repercussions after each release. For the public, we can learn about the technology leaders and innovation benchmarks in the industry, while for enterprises, the shortlist is an excellent publicity. The following is a brief introduction to the above three categories of leaderboards based on the public information on the Internet.

I. Patent Scorecard of The Wall Street Journal

(1) Introduction

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) publishes the technical strength rankings and stock market data of companies and research institutions in a certain industry in the form of PatentScorecard in the financial & investment column every Tuesday, and the same content is subsequently published in the market data center section of the online website of The Wall Street Journal. The patent scorecard mainly focuses on the patents in an industry, and the statistical indicators involve patent authorization, industrial influence, R&D intensity, technical intensity, scientific intensity, etc., and ranks the institutions in an industry according to technical intensity and scientific intensity, and gives the comparative results of patent strength after comprehensively considering the scale and quality of patent portfolio, and the statistical results are updated every 13 weeks. The patent scorecard covers 18 industries, including aerospace and national defense, automobiles and transportation, biology, chemistry, consumer electronics, personal consumer goods, comprehensive industries, electronic devices, energy and environment, food and beverage and tobacco, heavy industry equipment, industrial parts, raw materials, information technology, medical devices and services, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and communications. While giving the ranking results of patent portfolio, The Wall Street Journal also correlated the patent scorecard data with Dow Jones financial data, and gave the comparative results of the industrial influence, R&D intensity, patent authorization, stock market and the overall level of an industry.

The data of the patent scorecard of The Wall Street Journal is provided by The Patent Board. The Patent Committee actually belongs to ipIQ Company (ipIQ refers to intellectual property, intelligence quota; Now it is renamed ip IQ Global Company), and its predecessor is CHIresearch. Founded in 1968, CHI has been devoted to the research and analysis of scientific and technological innovation indicators, and has created a series of patent indicators, especially the precedent of statistical analysis of patent citations. CHI’s patent index system is introduced and adopted in the American Science and Engineering Index compiled and published by the National Science Foundation of the United States and the Patent Manual in the OECD series of science and technology index manuals. CHI is an absolute international leader in the field of patent measurement, and the patent scoreboard is its distinctive research achievement and has been registered as a trademark. In November 2004, CHI Company was merged and renamed ipIQ Company.

The patent scorecard was first published in BusinessWeek magazine on August 3rd, 1992. Before 2007, the patent scorecard was published in Businessweek and MIT’s Technology Review every year. Since 2007, The Wall Street Journal and the Patent Committee have become partners and regularly publish patent scorecards in The Wall Street Journal in the form of patent portfolio rankings.

In addition to publishing the ranking results of industrial patent portfolio in cooperation with The Wall Street Journal, the Patent Committee also published The Global Patent Scorecard, The Patent Board 500 Scorecard and the University Scorecard.

(II) Main indicators

Patent scorecard indicators include four aspects and six indicators:

1. Quality: including technical strength and industrial influence indicators. Technical strength is the overall evaluation result of an institution’s patent portfolio strength by combining quantity and quality factors, and it is one of the ranking bases of patent portfolio. Industrial influence refers to the influence of an institution’s patent portfolio on subsequent technological innovation, which is calculated by the cited data of patents.

2. Quantity: The index of patent authorization refers to the number of American patents granted in a certain institution during the statistical period.

3. Science: including indicators of scientific intensity and research intensity. Scientific intensity is used to measure the extent to which enterprises use scientific research results to construct their patent portfolios, and it is also one of the ranking criteria of patent portfolios. Research intensity refers to the number of patents whose scientific relevance is higher than the industry average in an institution’s patent portfolio.

4. Speed: innovation cycle index, which is used to measure the old and new degree of the existing technology on which the patent or patent portfolio is based.

Second, the IEEE patent strength scorecard

(1) Introduction

On October 23rd, 2013, IEEE SPECTRUM published the 2013 IEEE (American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Patent Power Scorecard. Patent strength scorecard is the result of objective and quantitative analysis of American patents of more than 5000 leading companies, academic institutions, non-profit organizations and government agencies around the world, which involves aerospace and national defense, automobiles and parts, biomedicine, chemistry, communication network equipment, communication network services, computer equipment and storage, computer software, computer systems, comprehensive enterprises, electronic products, government agencies, medical instruments, scientific instruments and semiconductor equipment manufacturing. The patent strength scorecard ranks according to the patent strength index, which comprehensively considers the quantity and quality of the patent portfolio, among which the patent quality is

It is reflected by the indicators related to patent growth, technological influence, technological originality and technological diffusion. As the scale of patent portfolio weighted by quality is adopted as the measurement basis, the technical strength of an institution can be measured as a whole, which is the best barometer to measure the technical R&D and innovation strength of various institutions. The list is published once a year, and the list in 2013 is the seventh release. The 2012 patent strength scorecard list was also published on Forbes website.

The patent strength scorecard is provided by 1790 Analytics. The founder of the company is Dr. Anthony Breitzman, who used to be the vice president of CHI and a world-renowned expert in science and technology assessment. Dr. Anthony Breitzman founded 1790 Analytical Company after he left CHI. Dr Patrick Thomas, head of patent analysis business and Chip D&rsquo, head of business development; Angelo is a former CHI researcher.

(II) Main indicators

The patent strength index in the IEEE patent strength scorecard is a comprehensive index after combining the number of patents and their growth, technical influence, originality and popularity. Its calculation formula is: patent strength index = number of patents × patent growth index × corrected technical influence index × technical originality index × technology diffusion index. Taking the patent strength index in 2012 as an example, the meaning of each parameter is:

1. The number of patents refers to the number of patents granted in the United States in 2012.

2. Patent growth index, which is used to reflect the patent activity of an institution, and then reflect the innovation activity of an institution. The calculation method is: the number of patents granted by an institution in the United States in the latest year (2012) divided by the average number granted each year in the previous five years (2007-2011).

3. The corrected technology impact index reflects the influence of an institution’s patent portfolio on the subsequent technology development. The calculation method is as follows: first, calculate the basic value of the technology impact index, and then correct it according to the self-citation rate (to eliminate the influence of extreme self-citation). The basic value of technology impact index refers to the number of times that all authorized patents of an institution were cited by all authorized patents in the United States in the last year (2012) in the first five years (2007-2011), divided by the average number of times that all authorized patents in the same period and in the same field as the patent portfolio of the institution were cited by all authorized patents in the United States in the last year.

4. The technical originality index reflects the breadth of the patented technology (i.e. cited patents) cited by an institution’s patent portfolio. Generally, improved inventions tend to refer to existing technologies from a single field, while important original inventions tend to combine patented technologies from different fields to form new inventions.

5. The technology diffusion index, also known as the technology popularization index, is similar to the technology originality index, but it reflects the breadth of the patented technology (i.e. cited patents) cited by an institution’s patent portfolio. The greater the technology diffusion index, it means that the patent application of an institution is popular, which has a large impact on the subsequent technological innovation.

Third, Thomson Reuters Global Top 100 Innovative Institutions Ranking

(1) Introduction

Thomson Reuters’s "Top 100 Innovative Institutions in the World" is the ranking result of the most innovative institutions in the world based on a series of patent indicators, which is published by Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property and Technology Division on its website. It has been published once a year since 2011 and has been published three times so far. According to the data of the top 100 innovative institutions in the world in 2013, according to the number of institutions on the list, there are 46 institutions from North America (45 from the United States and 1 from Canada), 32 institutions from Asia (28 from Japan, 3 from South Korea and 1 from Taiwan, China) and 22 institutions from Europe (including 12 from France and 4 from Switzerland). Although China leads the world in the number of patent applications, none of China companies are on the list due to the lack of patent quality and technical influence.

(II) Main indicators

The selection method of Thomson Reuters’s "Top 100 Global Innovation Institutions" is based on four criteria:

1. The total number of patents refers to the number of DWPI(Derwent World Patents Index) basic patents of an institution in recent three years. This basic patent refers to the patent that publicly released a new technology for the first time in the DWPI patent family.

2. The success rate of patent authorization refers to the number of patents published by an institution in the last three years divided by the number of patents authorized in the last three years.

3. The globality of patent portfolio refers to the number of four-party patents owned by an institution. The Quartet refers to China National Intellectual Property Administration, China, the European Patent Office, the Japanese Patent Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

4. Patent influence based on citation refers to the number of times an institution’s patents have been cited by others in recent five years (excluding self-citation).

summary

Comparing the above three rankings comprehensively, the common point is that, while reflecting the scale and activity of innovation through patent quantity data, it is more important to introduce patent quality data such as technical influence, diffusion, originality and globalization to reflect the benefits of innovation, thus truly and reliably reflecting the comprehensive technical strength and innovation ability of enterprises. Patent ranking itself is only a means of comparison and a yardstick to measure innovation output. Its real strength lies in highlighting that innovation is the core factor driving development in the era of knowledge economy. Take the top 100 innovative institutions in the world as an example. For three consecutive years, the listed institutions are better than those involved in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in various indicators: the annual share price growth is 4% higher, the market value-weighted sales growth rate is 2% higher, and the new job growth rate is 0.81% higher. At the top of the wave, these listed companies are deducing realistic cases of innovation-driven development to the society with objective and detailed data.