Appendices of Owner Names: "(in:...)" and "(w/o...)"
Introduction
The IPlytics platform uses the harmonization and ownership aggregation of LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions (LNIP). LNIP 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 Harmonization Team performs a manual quality check.
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, our Harmonization Team not only takes into account and manually checks the corporate structure of a company but also considers all reassignments, mergers, and acquisitions.
An ultimate owner is the 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 to research and governmental institutions and NPEs.
Owner "<Unknown>"
The concept of the ultimate owner usually applies to the enterprises (legal entities), research institutes, or governmental institutions that own patent families.
The owner "<unknown>" refers to patent families that are owned by individual inventors. Therefore, a large number of patent families that have the owner "<unknown>" is, at the same time, co-owned by owners that have the owner type "Inventor".
Moreover, "<unknown>" can also refer to patent families that do not have any applicant information at all.
Appendices of Owner Names: "(in:...)" and "(w/o...)"
In some cases, subsidiary portfolios are extracted from the portfolio of an ultimate owner to allow analyses of these entities. Such owners have the suffix "(in: ..."), where the name of the ultimate owner is stated in parentheses.
In other cases, the portfolio of a subsidiary is excluded from the portfolio of an ultimate owner to allow analyses of the ultimate owner without the patent families that belong to this subsidiary. Such owners have the suffix "(w/o ..."), where the name of the subsidiary excluded is stated in the parentheses.
One example for this approach is the owner Deutsche Telekom:
Deutsche Telekom
- Patent portfolio of the ultimate owner Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom (w/o T-Mobile US)
- Patent portfolio consisting of patent families of the ultimate owner Deutsche Telekom without the patent families of T-Mobile US.
T-Mobile US (in: Deutsche Telekom)
- Patent portfolio consisting of patent families of the subsidiary T-Mobile US. All these patent families are also part of the portfolio of the ultimate owner Deutsche Telekom.
Note: Adding up all patent families of " Deutsche Telekom (w/o T-Mobile US)" and all patent families of " T-Mobile US (in: Deutsche Telekom)" will not necessarily result in the Portfolio Size (= number of patent families) of the ultimate owner Deutsche Telekom. This is because some patent families are co-owned and show up in both patent portfolios.