• Automotive patents • Divisional patent applications • Mexican law updates • Non-compliance in India

• EU Trade Secrets Directive • Invalidation in Vietnam • Reexamination/invalidation • Chinese patents

PLUSNikolay Bogdanov from Gorodissky & Partners explores the transformation of patent law, specifically of utility models, in Russia over the past 25 years.

Patent LawyerGLOBAL REACH, LOCAL KNOWLEDGE CTC Legal Media

The September/October 2018

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Conference SpecialOur special edition publication in time forAIPPI, AIPLA, IPO, and GRUR

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Speed up your research with access to 106 patenting jurisdictions on one platform.

• Search global patents intuitively and comprehensively• Explore the landscape and turn data into intelligence with integrated Analytics V2• Monitor competitor’s patents with the comprehensive Legal Status Viewer• Identify potential licensing opportunities with Citation Explorer

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Although exploiting your own patent portfolio

effectively can be an excellent basis upon which

to build business decisions and strategy, it is

not sufficient to only know and understand your own

portfolio. In this increasingly competitive and global world,

understanding your competitors’ patent portfolios and

how they compare to your own is critical for business

survival. The rate at which new inventions are being patented

is ever increasing, therefore, continuous monitoring of

new patents is vital to ensure corporate success and financial

stability when attempting to access new markets.

Patent landscapingPatent landscape analysis can be used to provide insight

to different stakeholder groups across an organization,

including patent specialists and non-patent professionals

– such as management, research and development and

IP legal departments. A birds-eye view of market trends

and key competitors as well as identification of potential

business partners may be appropriate for management

teams. Many patent analysis tools provide users with the

ability to create visually appealing reports (think bubble

charts and 3D graphs) that communicate the results

clearly for decision-makers in a boardroom environment.

Research and development departments benefit from

an in-depth analysis of technological developments in

their field of expertise and identification of opportunities

for new product development in low-risk areas which

should avoid wasted R&D time and costs. Often, innovation-

driven companies will provide their own researchers and

engineers with access to patent search and analysis tools

to allow them to explore the landscape themselves.

The third group for whom patent analysis is of particular

value is the IP or legal department who will use the results

to identify potential areas of weakness to help form a

patent litigation strategy. The inclusion of up-to-date

legal status data as part of the analysis – a feature just

added to PatBase Analytics – makes it extremely valuable.

Cybersecurity landscape analysis byMinesoft and PatinformaticsIn a new report, Minesoft and Patinformatics studied

97,000 patent families from the past 10 years in the

Cybersecurity field. The research was restricted to the

world’s top 6 patenting jurisdictions, including the

United States, China, Japan, South Korea and the World

Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Starting with a clear understanding of the area of

investigation is critical when analyzing the final landscape

to answer the following questions:

1. Is the cybersecurity field a growing area of interest?

2. Which specific areas are of current interest?

3. Who are the key players?

4. Where are the key players filing?

5. Who are the main thought leaders in the cybersecurity field?

After devising an initial search strategy with a

combination of keywords, classification codes, assignees,

and inventors, the searcher focused in on the subject

using several limitation steps. In PatBase, search results

can be narrowed down by optimizing results and refining

by geographical area, publication date, technology area,

and assignee, to compile a solid search strategy before

progressing to the next stage of the landscape.

RésumésJason Resnick, Patent Agent, MinesoftJason recently joined the company after working on the commercial side

of IP for nearly 20 years supporting organizations to understand the effect

of Intellectual Property on business strategy. He can be contacted at:

info@minesoft.com

James Gray, Lead Software Developer, Minesoft, and co-author of theMinesoft and Patinformatics Cybersecurity reportJames has spent the last five years entirely focussed on patent software with

a particular focus on analytical software, and has led the development of

PatBase Analytics V2. He can be contacted at info@minesoft.com

Cybersecurity: Therace to protect ourcritical infrastructureJason Resnick and James Gray from Minesoft explore whyit is so important for business survival to understand yourcompetitors’ patent portfolios in the increasingly competitiveand global world, specifically considering the cybersecurityfield.

Jason Resnick

James Gray

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Starting with high-quality data is crucial to the accuracy and

precision of any patent search and analysis. If the underlying data used

is unreliable then no end result using that data can be trusted. The

data quality in PatBase is maintained by a close working relationship

with the big 5 patent offices, making thousands of error corrections

to the data we receive and combining it with additional information

to add quality to the end file.

Recently, Minesoft and RWS have doubled the number of Chinese

assignee names translated in PatBase using a controlled high-quality

human translation (now at 40,000!) – just one example of the work

we put in to continuously improve our backlog of patent data.

Once the searcher was satisfied that the search strategy was both

comprehensive and specific, the final step was visualization to answer

the key questions surrounding the area of the study.

Is this a growing area of interest?Analysis firm Cybersecurity Ventures has estimated that global

spending on cybersecurity products will exceed $1 trillion cumulatively

over the next 5 years. Studying the patenting trends by jurisdiction

and number of priority filings over the last 10 years shows that this

could well be accurate. It seems that cybersecurity has become a

country-wide imperative for many of the world’s nations and is

arguably one of the most important technological initiatives being

explored.

Since there is an 18-month lag between when patents are applied

for and when they are published, the dip seen in 2016 in Figure 1(below) is typical for a growing or stable technology domain. This

makes the trend line for China even more startling – industry in

China is filing in this area at an unprecedented level. South Korea is

also showing an uptick in priority filings with a 2016 earliest priority

year; signaling considerable growth from that country.

Although the United States was the leading priority country up

until 2014, with a steady increase in filings between 2010 and 2014,

China has now far surpassed them and the rest of the world in seeking

patent protection in this area.

Which specific areas are of interest?The Minesoft and Patinformatics report was split into 7 sub-categories

for a more in-depth analysis: protecting wireless networks, protecting

wired networks, encrypted communications, secure payment protocols,

authentication, platform integrity, protecting computer data.

Out of these categories, the largest was authentication with 38k

patent families, 18k granted patents, and 90k applications. Authentication

is establishing the identity of a person or at times a machine, using

passwords, smartcards, PIN numbers or even biometrics, including

fingerprints, voice recognition or retinal scans (see Figure 2 opposite).

Who are the key players and where arethey filing?The top 3 companies with the highest number of patent families are

IBM, Microsoft, and Samsung. However, in Figure 3 (opposite) we

can see that the production of Samsung and Microsoft has slowed in

recent years, allowing intel to take second position from 2016 onwards.

In the same time frame, Chinese companies OPPO mobile and

Alibaba (who rank 9th and 18th overall) can be seen as the two fastest

rising companies in the cybersecurity field. This provides additional

evidence that China has placed an emphasis on this area and that

industry, as opposed to government interest, is driving the growth.

Figure 1 shows that the two most popular jurisdictions for this

field, by a significant amount, are China and the US. By studying a

comparison analysis for these two countries, the searcher unearthed

some surprising trends.

Figure 1

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Figure 2

Figure 3

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Microsoft and Intel are filing substantially more patents in China

than IBM, the top US filer, does. Whilst Qualcomm files for nearly

60% of their inventions in China as well as the US. This is the highest

of any US company in the top 25 when these two jurisdictions are

compared.

Perhaps more surprisingly, Chinese companies Tencent, Huawei,

Alibaba, Lenovo, ZTE, and Xiaomi are filing a significant number of

their inventions in the US as well as China. Having this many Chinese

companies in the top 25 who are seeking protection in jurisdictions

other than China is a clear signal of the importance they place on these

innovations and their likely quality.

ConclusionTo summarize, starting from a simple keyword search and using tools

such as PatBase Analytics V2, our analyst was able to determine that

this technology area has maintained a steady level of growth over the

past 10 years, with a spike in the US and more recently, China and

South Korea. IBM is dominating the landscape in the US but is filing

the only a small amount in China. At the same time, Chinese companies

Oppo mobile and Alibaba have been the fastest rising companies

from 2016 onwards.

Patent landscaping, used in this way, can give broad and detailed

insights into a technology field and the companies and individuals

that lead it. It will be interesting to see how the cybersecurity landscape

continues to develop over the coming years.

To gain further insights into this technology area, download your

free copy of the Minesoft and Patinformatics Cybersecurity report

at: www.minesoft.com/cybersecurity-patenting-trends/

All the findings in the report were found using the comprehensive

high-quality data in PatBase. Powerful, integrated PatBase Analytics V2

makes it easy to recreate a similar patent landscape analysis for any

technology area.

In knowledge-driven industries, intelligent information is key.

Regularly searching and reviewing patent literature is crucial for

survival in any company invested in creating the technologies of

tomorrow. Minesoft’s continuing commitment to developing innovative

products for the patent information market ensures that organizations

are empowered to harness new technologies and exploit patent

literature to boost innovation globally.

For more information, contact Minesoft at info@minesoft.com or

call us on +44 (0)20 8404 0651.

The cybersecurity report was produced in partnership with

Anthony Trippe at Patinformatics.

Figure 4

Cybersecurity hasbecome a country-wideimperative for many of theworld’s nations and is arguablyone of the most importanttechnological initiativesbeing explored.”

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