IEEE Spectrum has refreshed its annual assessment of IP portfolios in different technology sectors. Last year Microvision was named in the Top 20 electronics companies worldwide in patent pipeline power. This year we moved up 3 slots to 17th, even though we filed 25 patents during the evaluation year, compared to hundreds filed by some of the other names on the list (Hitachi, Xerox, Sony, Sharp, and LG Electronics to name a few.)
In this evaluation, the Adjusted Pipeline Impact (API) score indicates how frequently a company’s patents from the previous five years were cited by other patents, adjusting for self-citation. Microvision scored 2nd in API out of the Top 20 electronics companies.
Here is an excerpt from a January 2007 Business Week article discussing why this metric may be important. Thanks to the investor that sent this Business Week article my way.
“Scholars have learned that a powerful proxy for innovative expertise is how frequently a company’s existing patents are cited in patent applications. Indeed, one-quarter of all patents receive no citations, and a mere 0.01% earn more than 100 citations, according to Bronwyn Hall, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. In a study by four economists covering seven industries that generate a large number of patents, researchers found that a patent mentioned 14 times by other patents is worth, on average, 100 times as much as a patent cited only 8 times. Another estimated that companies with widely cited patents and a track record of turning them into products outperformed the market by 1,000% over a 10-year period.”