Building the connection between patent cost and value.
Budget Management
Patent Budget Management
We understand that patent budget management plays a key role in patenting strategy. Patent budgets are coming under increased scrutiny due to economic changes.
Cipher gives you the ability to analyse historic and projected costs. Using industry accepted financial models, it provides you with the evidence required to justify patent budgets. This ability to classify patents to your key technology areas helps to mitigate risk and gain competitive intelligence.
On this page:
“9% of patent budgets are being invested in analysis to communicate the strategic benefit of portfolios. This investment is critical because, on average, 4.5% of revenues can be exposed to third party patent claims.”
Cipher Report on Portfolio Optimisation, March 2020
“
The capability that has helped us the most from a budget and spend standpoint is being able to demonstrate how we compare to competitors and others in our space and benchmark against what they’re spending on their patents. I can see how accurate Cipher is by comparing it to our own costs.
Bob Pechman, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel, Seagate Technology
Do you need to answer these questions?
How do I know whether the patent budget is being sensibly allocated?
The Cipher Optimisation Model provides a rational basis for identifying areas of over- and under- stocking. By creating a repeatable model, your patenting strategy can be recalibrated as business requirements and competitive landscapes change.
When facing budget pressure, how do you know what cuts cause the least damage?
There’s no easy way to identify your ‘bad’ patents. There are patents however that don’t serve your business objectives well. By mapping your patents to your technology taxonomy, and combining with revenue data, you can identify the patented technologies that provide the least value. This evidence-based approach provides the strategic patent intelligence required to develop a pruning strategy.
What information best conveys to the CTO and CFO the value delivered by our patent portfolio?
Many companies cannot point to direct licensing revenue. There are, however, established ways to link the cost of your portfolio to the quantum of patent risk mitigated. Executives are alive to the substantial risk of paying away substantial royalties. Explaining the relationship between your patents and the ability to neutralise threats plays well before this audience.
…then Cipher can help.
How Cipher supports your analysis of patent budget
1
Define Budget Objectives
Define the approach that will best enable you to understand how the patents in your portfolio map to product/revenue lines.
2
Build an Optimisation Model
By combining patent data from Cipher and revenue data, the model identifies areas of under- and over-stocking.
3
Actionable Intelligence
By understanding which patented technologies deliver the most value, will enable you to decide how best to align your patent budget.
See how Cipher can help
“
Having an empirical way of pointing to why we file the applications that we file, based on data from Cipher classifiers is crucial. It helps us to make the case of what we need to do and the budget required to file these applications.
Robert Calico, VP IP & Litigation, ARM
As featured in…
Insights and Events
Patent Risk Management Webinar
How can a structured approach to the management of patent risk drastically improve communication within your organisation and mitigate potentially catastrophic risks? Watch our webinar to find out.
Read more
Portfolio Optimisation Report – Key Findings
Hear from Google, Accenture, Facebook and many other large patent owning organisations in the full Cipher report. Take a look at what the world’s patent owning organisations are saying about balanced portfolios and the various strategic objectives served by those portfolios.
Read more
Beyond portfolio optimisation – calculating the value of rightsizing
View our webinar discussing results of the Cipher Report on Portfolio Optimisation and the optimisation model that can help you balance your portfolio.
Read more
COVID 19: Mitigating the Impact of Patent Budget Cuts in Recession
Covid-19 has caused greater scrutiny of patent budgets and a need to cut costs – so where are you supposed to start?
Read more
Patent budgets triggered by Covid – cutting not wounding webinar
View our webinar that addresses the challenges of managing a patent budget in a recession.
Read more
Case Studies
BorgWarner on how automation increases speed and reduces cost
Technical Product Strategy Lead, Chris Kowalsky, explains the problems with existing approaches to patent search and how Cipher Automotive has improved efficiency as they develop new technologies essential to the future of the car.
Read more
ARM on classifiers and managing patent budgets
Rob Calico, VP Litigation and IP, discusses the challenges of managing a sophisticated portfolio in a fast-moving technology environment, and how Cipher has helped them manage their patenting strategy and budgets.
Read more
Centrica on the value of Cipher
Charles Clark, Director of Intellectual Property at Centrica, discusses the efficiency gains from using Cipher and the tasty bits of data gleaned from using Cipher’s AI over conventional search.
Read more
Richardson Oliver Insights on the challenges of IP Teams
COO of Richardson Oliver Insights, Erik Oliver, talks about the challenges faced by IP teams with managing high value portfolios and the increased demand for both better data and better ways to communicate the value of patents.
Read more
Budget Management FAQs
Why is helpful to use both patent and revenue data when considering budget questions?
The size of your portfolio should be analysed relative to both your revenue and the market more generally. Any other approach fails to take account of either the global population of patents in a specific area or of the relative importance of that technology to your organisation.
Do financial models ignore important topics such as patent quality?
No. Both patent quality (and other subjective factors such as seriousness of threat) are taken into account. While Cipher ‘quality’ scores use indicators such as citations, age, the model expects the company to add a subjective weighting in this area.
Does Cipher provide all the inputs for its Optimisation Model?
The Cipher platform can provide the required patent numbers (both for your own portfolio and others). The revenue data will either be available internally or from publicly available sources (such as SEC filings). The Cipher Solutions team is able to provide additional consultancy support.
Can Cipher help in the identification of our best patents?
No. Cipher does include industry standard measures of ‘quality’ (e.g. citations, age, geography). As of now, it is beyond AI to identify definitively what is a ‘good’ patent in key areas such as validity and infringement.
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.
Optimise your portfolio
Ensure you have the right portfolio to meet your strategic patenting objectives.
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.
Benchmark your portfolio
Assess your portfolio in comparison to other owners through your own technology lens.
Monetise your portfolio
Identify opportunities to create value through licensing or sale of patent assets.
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
