MARKET ANALYSIS
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The Patent Board's patent scorecards track the U.S. patent portfolios of more than 2500 of the world's top patenting firms. A company must have a minimum of 45 granted utility patents over the previous five years to be eligible for inclusion in the scorecard.
The scorecard draws from a proprietary warehouse of patent data that has been compiled for more than three decades. The database encompasses more than 50,000 companies across 17 industries. All scorecard data are based on granted U.S. patents within the Patent Board's data collection. The full collection includes patent information from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office. As reported on the scorecard, company data include all of a company's subsidiaries.
The scorecard data reflect a blend of quality and quantity patent metrics. Technology strength is the ranking indicator for most industries, including the medical device industry. The Patent Board employs mathematically based analysis to rank a company's overall intellectual property and innovation strength using a series of metrics. The metrics are as follows.
| Scorecard Rating Metrics | Patents Granted. This figure equals the number of U.S. patents granted in a given year. This excludes design and other special-case inventions Only industry-specific patent counts are included for companies that operate in multiple industries. |
| Technology Strength. This measure provides an aggregate assessment of patents and innovation by considering combined quality and quantity aspects of a company's portfolio. | |
| Science Strength. This indicator measures, at an aggregate level, the degree to which a company's patent portfolio is linked to core science. | Research Intensity. This metric track a company's level of fundamental research in a given industry compared with other companie's portfolios and patents across the same technology areas. |
| Supporting Metrics | |
| Innovation Cycle Time. This metric indicates the median age of all patents referenced in a company's granted patents for the year. Measured in years, a lower number is more desirable, as it indicates the elapsed time between current patents and the previous generation of patents. | |
| Industry Impact. This metric quantifies how much a company's patent portfolio influences the development of technologies at other companies. |
