Introduction

The Ultimate Owner Concept

Subsidiaries of an Ultimate Owner

            Owner "<Unknown>"

            Appendices of Owner Names: "(in:...)" and "(w/o...)"

Owner Type

 

Introduction

PatentSight conducts a harmonization process to increase the accuracy of owner-related analyses. The process entails manual data verification to define the current owner of each patent family. Furthermore, we complement this process with the latest M&A information and research on former company names and misspellings.

Our data harmonization is first conducted automatically by an algorithm. Then, corporate structures are retrieved. Finally, the PatentSight Harmonization Team performs a manual quality check. Depending on the harmonization level of an owner, the owner icon displayed in the top left corner of the Owner Summary is either red, yellow, or green

 

	Red = Harmonization Level 0 Auto-harmonization of this owner has been performed. Note: The names of unharmonized owners are written in UPPER CASE to make them also distinguishable in charts and tables.
	Yellow = Harmonization Level 1 Auto-harmonization of this owner has been performed.   Dedicated corporate structures have been retrieved.
	Green = Harmonization Level 3 Auto-harmonization of this owner has been performed.   Dedicated corporate structures have been retrieved. Manual quality check has been performed.

 

Tip: If you encounter unharmonized owners with a yellow or red owner symbol that are significant for your analyses, please do not hesitate to reach out to your Customer Success Manager. We will issue a harmonization request for you.  Please note however, that it may take several weeks until your harmonization request has been processed. 

 

The Ultimate Owner Concept

For the correct evaluation of patent portfolios, it is crucial to know the current owner of each patent family.

We report the current owner of a patent family at a consolidated level. To define the ultimate owner of a patent family, we not only take into account and manually check the corporate structure of a company, but also consider all reassignments, mergers and acquisitions.

An ultimate owner has no known majority shareholder and owns patent families that belong to its portfolio either directly or through its group companies, subsidiaries, and/or associate companies (each being majority-owned by the Ultimate Owner who holds at least 50% of shares).

For the consolidation of an ultimate owner, we harmonize applicant, assignee, and assignor names along with misspellings, misleading transcriptions, and transcription variants. The harmonized ultimate owner also includes former names of the company itself or any of its subsidiaries. The same approach applies for research and governmental institutions as well as for NPEs.

To add an ultimate owner to the search panel, click on the "Owner" icon.

Next, click on "Add ...", enter the name of an owner of interest, and select the owner you would like to add to the search panel.

Finally, click on the search tab to run the search. This will narrow down your search results to all active patent families that belong to the portfolio of the owner selected (here: RELX).

You can also use the ultimate owner in charts and tables for rankings, benchmarks, and other analyses.

Subsidiaries of an Ultimate Owner

Following the ultimate owner concept, PatentSight only shows the highest level of a corporate tree as the owner. However, it is also possible to work with inventor, applicant, assignee and/or assignor information as originally stated in the patent documents.

You can find these search fields under "+ More" in the section "Ownership".

These search fields can be used to extract the portfolio of a subsidiary or patent families related to a specific inventor.

The "Inventor", "Applicant", "Assignee", and "Assignor" are also available as attributes for charts and tables and can be used, e.g., for inventor rankings.

 

Note: Adding up all patent families of "Sumitomo Chemical (w/o Dongwoo Fine-Chem)" and all patent families of "Dongwoo Fine-Chem (in: Sumitomo Chemical)" will not necessarily  result in the Portfolio Size (= number of patent families) of the ultimate owner Sumitomo Chemical. This is because some patent families are co-owned and show up in both patent portfolios.

Owner Type

PatentSight distinguishes between six different owner types, each of which has a specific definition and a different symbol in the Owner summary:

	Company Entities that can be identified as, e.g., business entities or financial institutions.
	Government Entities that can be identified as, e.g., governments, governmental institutions, or state- or government owned enterprises
	Inventor Individuals who can be identified as inventors.
	Natural Person Individuals who can be identified as natural persons.
	NPE Non-practicing entities that hold patents for licensing or litigation purposes, but do not commercialize the inventions protected by the patents
	Research Institution Entities that can be identified as, e.g., universities, academies, hospitals and medical institutions or research centers.

 

Note: Only the owner types "Company", "Government", "NPE", and "Research Institution" are manually harmonized.  The owner types "Inventor" and "Natural Person" are not harmonized and always have the Harmonization Level 0

To filter for a specific owner type, you can use the filter element "Owner Type" which can be found under "+ More" in the section "Company".

Note, however, that if you select e.g. the Owner Type "Research Institution", the search will also return patent families that are co-owned by different owner types. This is why an owner ranking based on such filter settings may also include owners that do not have the Owner Type "Research Institution".