The patent landscape is always evolving, with new trends and new technologies making an impact. The Universal Technology Taxonomy (UTT) which classifies all the world's patents into 121 technology classes has just been updated to provide the most up-to-date patent intelligence.
What changes can you expect?
The taxonomy was designed to ensure that the 44m+ active patents and applications globally are equally represented.
There are now 10 superclass categories, and beneath that sit 121 technology subclasses, to provide you with consistent and objective analysis of patented technologies owned by all companies worldwide.
Changes from UTT 2023 to UTT 2024 version:
Information
Blockchain was one of the smallest classes and originally included in the 2022 UTT taxonomy as an emergent technology. Since however, year-on-year publications have diminished and therefore the class has been deleted. Blockchain families have now been trained into Security and other relevant classes.
Life Sciences
This superclass has seen the most changes. Three new classes have been created:
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Infectious diseases
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Chronic diseases
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Vaccines
The distinction between the new Infectious and Chronic diseases together with Vaccines should allow a better means to differentiate the portfolios of pharmaceutical companies. Also, this new structure is much more aligned to the class names distilled during the genesis of UTT.
Molecular oncology
This class has been renamed to Oncology as the class now includes non-molecular treatments.
Surgical catheters
This class has been merged with Surgical implants.
Mechanical
Aerodynamics has been rescoped to also capture marine technologies and renamed to Aeronautic & marine.
Sensors
The following changes were undertaken to simplify the taxonomy:
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Superclass Sensors & optics has been renamed as Sensors.
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Subclass Lenses is renamed as Optics and moved into the Mechanical superclass.
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Subclass Image sensors is renamed as Optical sensors.
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Subclasses Radar and Lidar have been merged to form Radar & lidar, again to mitigate inherent confusion.
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Projection has been moved to the Electrical superclass which seems a more natural home.
Telecommunication
Wireless networks as one of the largest classes has been divided into two new classes:
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Cellular networks, all technologies associated with cellular (mobile) wireless including Radio Access Networks (RAN).
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WLAN & WPAN, technologies associated with Wireless Local Networks (WLAN) and Wireless Personal Networks (WPAN) and includes Bluetooth, RFID and Internet of Things (IoT).
The rest of the taxonomy remains unchanged.
How do I use the new version of UTT?
Beginning this week, we have automatically updated all accounts to the 2024 version of UTT, so it will now appear as the default option.
If you would like to continue using the 2023 version to update and maintain existing reports, you can easily switch by clicking settings on the top right corner of your screen:
From there, you can select the version of UTT that you need. If you have any questions on how to use UTT, don't hesitate to get in touch.
Learn more about UTT and the 121 technologies here.
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