Innovation game: leaders from 2020 and ones to watch in 2021

We’re awash with infor­ma­tion, from Face­book and Twit­ter to wall-to-wall news cov­er­age, but much of this is clat­ter. Knowl­edge has sub­stance, coher­ence, mean­ing and val­ue. The lead­ing com­pa­nies of 2020 knew that, which is why they invest­ed time and resources in study­ing and under­stand­ing their mar­kets. The inno­va­tors of 2021 will do the same. 

“It is impos­si­ble to stay on top of the inno­va­tion in your mar­ket with­out patent ana­lyt­ics,” says Matt Troy­er, direc­tor of patent ana­lyt­ics at Anaqua, which serves more than 50 per cent of the top 20 US patent fil­ers and top 20 glob­al brands. 

In 2020, there were more than four mil­lion patents issued glob­al­ly, accord­ing to the patent sta­tis­tics as analysed by Anaqua’s AcclaimIP plat­form. Chi­na was respon­si­ble for 2.7 mil­lion of these, which sug­gests it dom­i­nates the inno­va­tion game. “Look a bit more close­ly, though, and this is not a true pic­ture of what’s going on,” says Troy­er. 

As of Jan­u­ary, only 139,000 of the Chi­nese patents were issued out­side Chi­na, which indi­cates the rest do not have wide com­mer­cial or social val­ue. “If the patents had com­mer­cial val­ue, their own­ers would have reg­is­tered them else­where as well,” he says.

“There has been a steady increase in the num­bers of patents issued over the past 20 years and China’s share of this increase has remained fair­ly con­stant.”

There were near­ly 720,000 patents issued glob­al­ly in 2001 and just over 1.3 mil­lion in 2020, exclud­ing those reg­is­tered only in Chi­na with no coun­ter­part else­where. 

“Com­pa­nies use our patent ana­lyt­ics soft­ware for a com­pet­i­tive edge,” says Troy­er. “They can see if an idea has been patent­ed before and make sure their own inno­va­tion is as new as they think. With­out nov­el­ty, a patent appli­ca­tion will fail.”

In the lead of com­pa­nies on the inno­va­tion list is Sam­sung Elec­tron­ics, with 17,955 patents. It is fol­lowed by Huawei Tech (12,099), then IBM (9,931), Canon KK (9,278), and LG Elec­tron­ics (9,221). 

Inno­va­tion is boom­ing. Glob­al patent fil­ings rose 2.3 per cent, the high­est rate for some years, accord­ing to fig­ures for the most recent 12-month peri­od, pub­lished in the World Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Indi­ca­tors 2020 report from the World Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Orga­ni­za­tion (WIPO).

But this does not include Chi­na. The fig­ures, which cov­er 2019, show a 3 per cent fall in glob­al patent appli­ca­tions, the first decline in a decade, with the inclu­sion of Chi­na.

Nev­er­the­less, WIPO’s report is opti­mistic. The decline “was dri­ven by a drop in fil­ings by Chi­nese res­i­dents amid an over­all shift in reg­u­la­tions there aimed at opti­mis­ing appli­ca­tion struc­tures”, it says. There was a 5.9 per cent increase in trade­mark fil­ings and a 1.3 per cent increase in indus­tri­al design fil­ing activ­i­ty. 

Even though the sta­tis­tics pre­date the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, WIPO is con­vinced there is a “strong foun­da­tion of IP activ­i­ty that will serve as a base for new advance­ments as the pan­dem­ic sub­sides”. Tak­ing account of the time need­ed for research and devel­op­ment (R&D), COVID-19’s impact on patents would not be expect­ed for a num­ber of years. 

With this in mind, a fur­ther AcclaimIP patent data search by Anaqua reveals how quick­ly inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies have adapt­ed. The first patent men­tion of COVID-19 appears in March 2020, before many peo­ple out­side Chi­na had heard of the virus.  

Patents offer busi­ness­es the eco­nom­i­cal­ly crit­i­cal abil­i­ty to pro­tect their knowl­edge from com­peti­tors, but they also offer a func­tion as close as you’re like­ly to get to pick­ing the lock on a rival’s R&D depart­ment. 

“They offer a trade-off for busi­ness­es,” says Troy­er. “Patent own­ers get the right to exclude oth­ers from using their inven­tions, usu­al­ly for 20 years, in exchange for full dis­clo­sure to the pub­lic, includ­ing rivals. Nowhere else do you have such a wealth of tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion and doc­u­ment­ed details of your com­peti­tors’ inno­va­tion. It is the most com­pre­hen­sive cor­pus of data on your competitor’s inno­va­tion activ­i­ty and roadmap.”

Patent appli­ca­tions can also alert man­agers to dis­rup­tors or new play­ers and show how com­peti­tors are posi­tion­ing them­selves. Large cor­po­ra­tions use patent data to mon­i­tor start-ups enter­ing their space or uni­ver­si­ties that may have devel­oped licens­able inno­va­tions.

“Map­ping a patent land­scape, for exam­ple, iden­ti­fies the patents in a tech­nol­o­gy and divides them up by patent own­er, inven­tors, tech­nol­o­gy, date and coun­tries where filed,” Troy­er explains. “Patent land­scapes help busi­ness man­agers eval­u­ate their com­pet­i­tive posi­tion and nav­i­gate the patent thick­et pri­or to intro­duc­ing new prod­uct fea­tures or enter­ing new mar­kets.

“For­tu­nate­ly, in this increas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive and inven­tive world, patent ana­lyt­ics give busi­ness­es the pow­er to sift real knowl­edge from the clat­ter to make informed deci­sions.

“It doesn’t make sense for a busi­ness to waste time and mon­ey los­ing the right to exploit its own inno­va­tion or fil­ing patents on some­thing that’s already been invent­ed.”

See for your­self the per­for­mance of AcclaimIP. Start your free tri­al here

Pro­mot­ed by Anaqua