Organisation Structure in Classification

Definitions of portfolio & patent ownership including Owner, Organisation and Assignee in the Classification platform

When you search for an organisation in Classification, results are grouped to show all patents assigned to all entities including subsidiaries, acquired companies, merged companies and companies corrected for erroneous entries in the patent registry. For more information relating to Classification Corporation Grouping and Organisation ownership please click here.

Classification groups to the ultimate parent (“Organisation”), to the owning entity (“Owner”), and to the legal owner on record (“Assignee”).

Further information on these definitions can be found here:

In the example above, if Volkswagen Group’s portfolio is added to the report (click the '+' to the right of Volkswagen Group in the image above), the 'organisation' would be listed as 'Volkswagen Group’ in your report.

If Porsche’s portfolio is added to the report (click the '+' to the right of Porsche AG in either of these instances in the image above), the 'organisation' would be listed as ‘Porsche’ in your report.

Our data provider 1790 help with patents that change hands and the structure of what we refer to as Owner.

Both 'organisation' and 'owner' are Classification created groups that incorporates grouping of subsidiaries and similar sub-entities into larger groups in Classification.

Organisation and ownership grouping combine’s data from our data provider 1790, Classification software, Classification manual grouping and Classification user input. The aim here is to correct any errors in the raw data and ownership structure.

Ownership is determined and based on the current registered owner at the respective patent office. If a patent changes hands, Classification tracks that. We also highlight jointly owned patents and they show up in results for both owning entities. Jointly owner patents are listed in the Classification data, as shown below: