Objective measures make for reliable comparisons.
Cipher provides an objective and repeatable way to benchmark patents in your portfolio against your known competitors, threats and new entrants.
On this page:
98% of patent owners use Benchmarking to support their patent portfolio strategy and 89% for Competitive Intelligence
Have you ever asked these questions?
What’s the best way to compare my portfolio to others?
It is important to compare your patent portfolio through your own technology lens so that comparisons are aligned to your view of the world. Cipher enables you to build technology classifiers that maps both your, your competitor’s and third-party patents to the same scope. Best practice suggests that you incorporate revenue into your model, as fair comparisons need to take account of these differences. Optimisation Model
How do you take account of quality as well as quantity?
Cipher includes quality scores linked to citations, age and geography. These need to be combined with your own internal and subjective weightings. These include information about patents that have been successfully licensed or litigated. In many cases this may have more to do with the importance of the technology as the relative difference between patents in the same technology area.
What metrics make the most sense to CTOs and CFOs?
Increasingly patent teams produce dashboard tracking key indicators. CFOs often need to visualise the connection between cost and value, while the C-suite focus more on how the patent portfolio supports business strategy. Cipher supports the business in the design, development and delivery of custom dashboards.
If these are your issues, Cipher can help you.
“With improvements in AI technology and other analytics platforms like Cipher, today we are able to understand the numbers of patents that are relevant to certain technology areas at a push of a button.
Jeremiah Chan, Head of Patents, Meta
How to use Cipher to support benchmarking
1
Define your objectives
Use Cipher to support the initial evaluation by defining the appropriate patent metrics whether age, geography, cost or other objective measures
2
Establish comparables
Define your taxonomy using Cipher to cluster or classify patents by technology and compare to competitors or other comparables
3
Develop a custom dashboard
Deliver dashboards that benchmark objectively and repeatedly using Cipher to support evidence-based patent decisions
Explore how Cipher can help to…
Identify regional patenting trends
How can I spot differing patenting strategies and trends by geographic region?
Benchmark at the corporate level
How can I use consistent metrics to compare my portfolio against my peers?
Conduct industry risk analysis
How can I understand the litigation risk associated with my industry?
Prune your patent portfolio
I need to cut patent budgets, how can I prune my portfolio with minimum impact?
Want to find out more?
Explore other ways Cipher can help you benchmark your patent portfolio.
As featured in…
“Our issue was how to fit other companies’ portfolios into that same framework that we use and there’s just no other tool other than Cipher that can do that.
Bob Pechman, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel, Seagate Technology
Insights and Events
Benchmarking Patent Portfolios Report – Key Findings
Hear from leading patent owning organisations on the importance of benchmarking your patent portfolio in our Benchmarking Study.
Read more
Competitive Intelligence – how can benchmarking data enhance your patenting strategy?
View our webinar where we hear from industry experts on how benchmarking data can enhance your patent strategy and best practice on communicating this analysis to those outside of IP teams.
Read more
Benchmarking your patent portfolio – the key to your patenting strategy
WEBINAR
The Key Findings from the Benchmarking your Patent Portfolio Study are out! Catch up on the recording as we delve into each key finding and hear from industry experts at Facebook and Paragraf.
Read more
Strategic Patent Intelligence
What have we learnt over 2000 years that can help us improve our understanding of patent portfolios and how to communicate their value?
Read more
Feeding the immune system
Staying healthy and avoiding infections has never been more important, but who is developing new technologies in immunity?
Read more
Disinfection and Sterilisation
The global outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has trigged a spotlight on disinfection and sterilisation solutions, attracting interest and investment from companies looking to develop new technologies. Who owns the patents?
Read more
Case Studies
BAE Systems on the importance of competitive intelligence in disruptive technology environments
Chief Counsel for Intellectual Property and Technology Law, Dr. Bobby Mukherjee, explains how his IP team uses Cipher to help communicate the importance of IP internally and to navigate complex technology landscapes.
Read more
Seagate on keeping up with technology changes
Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at Seagate, Bob Pechman explains the pressures of supporting the business during a period of rapid technological change and how Cipher helps see the patent landscape through Seagate’s own technology lens.
Read more
Ocado on balancing IP protection with mitigation of patent risk and conflict
Head of IP, Lucy Wojcik, talks about the need instant answers to who’s doing what and how Cipher helped Ocado implement a world class IP strategy.
Read more
Red Hat on using the Cipher Optimisation Model
Jared Engstrom, Head of Patent Development, talks about the growth in Red Hat’s portfolio, how he has used Cipher’s custom classifiers and how the Cipher Optimisation model has improved their understanding of the competitive landscape.
Read more
Benchmarking
How can you know who to benchmark against?
Identifying your main competitors is straightforward, even if they differ by business unit. Cipher has automated the production of global patent landscapes using classifiers. This is a great way to identify companies outside your sector, including start-ups and Universities.
How can you be sure Cipher is accurate?
Cipher’s machine learning algorithms can be tested for accuracy using established measures of precision and recall. Cipher has published a peer reviewed paper in World Patent Information establishing its ability to achieve 96% accuracy.
What are the benefits of automating the production of benchmarking data?
Automation saves time and money. Cipher is an efficiency play. It also has the benefit of generating data that is consistent, objective and repeatable; eliminating unavoidable inconsistencies which are inevitable using conventional (Boolean, keyword and codes) approaches.
With Cipher you can also…
Gather competitor intelligence
Understand who’s doing what by automating patent to technology mapping.
Model cross licensing
Combine patent and revenue data to determine rational licensing outcomes.
Manage your budget
Justify patent budgets to CFOs and others to communicate the impact of your investment.
Conduct due diligence
Automate manual reviews for efficient execution of M&A and licensing transactions.
Tackle inbound patent assertion
Be prepared with evidence to create a fast and effective threat assessment.
Monetise your portfolio
Identify opportunities to create value through licensing or sale of patent assets.
Optimise your Portfolio
Ensure you have the right portfolio to meet your strategic patenting objectives
Predict technology trends
Track new technologies of today and discover the unknown owners of future disruptive innovation.
Why Cipher
Trained by humans, built by machine to give you independently verified accuracy
“Cipher’s classifiers enable you to understand the patent landscape or analyze a portfolio. Combining expertise in both IP and data science, Cipher provides you with solutions to the strategic problems patent owners face, with quick and accurate results.” Erik Oliver, Richardson Oliver Insights
