This presentation will give some guidelines on how to create a meaningful Patent Landscapes. Generating patent landscaping reports seems simple, but it isn’t. For making patent landscapes you have to take several different issues into consideration. It’s important at the start to already have in mind what kind of landscape report you are going to prepare, and choose a topic of interest, but preferable not one that is too broad. It’s also extremely important to have a clean (80-90% relevance) dataset that the landscape is based on; otherwise the outcome will be rubbish. And of course, do not use landscapes for questions that require a legal opinion (like Freedom-to-operate conclusions!!). Patent landscapes are not aimed to be as precise as other patent searches. Some more important issues has to be taken in account and are presented.

1. The Art of Patent Landscaping
II-SDV - Nice
Aalt van de Kuilen
April, 18th 2016

2. Definitions
 Patent landscape reports provide a snap-shot of
the patent situation of a specific technology or
company, either within a given country or region,
or globally.
WIPO definition

3. Why?
Patent Landscapes can give an overview of
 technology sector
 competitors
 economic value of patent portfolios
 strategic position
Impact of Patent Landscapes on R&D:
 shorten R&D time by 60%
 save R&D costs by 40%

4. Limitations
 Very important:
 Be aware that not all companies, active in a market, have
a similar patent filing strategy
 Example  TESLA (hardly any patents on electric cars)

5. Before we start
Before starting the Patent Landscape it is
important to know the reason for creating a
patent landscape!!!
Every Landscape has a purpose why it has to
be created!!

6. Creating a landscape
 Don’t underestimate how difficult it can be to create
a landscape
 Do not underestimate time needed to plan and
execute a landscape!!

7. Step 1: Ask for the reason for creating this landscape
The purpose for the landscape has impact on what
decision(s) is/are going to be taken based on the
information.  impact on the scope!!!

8. Step 2: Become familiar with the topic
Before you start you have to become familiar with
the topic by reading some general articles or
reviews.

9. Step 3: Considerations before starting the search
a) Patent families
b) Citation search
c) Patent assignee names
d) Classifications
e) Regions
f) Broad or small topic

10. a) Patent Families
What is the most useful patent family structure for
landscaping
Databases have different definitions
Most used are 2 definitions
 Extended families  INPADOC (about 89% is based on one priority!)
 Strict families  WPI, Espacenet.(100% based on one priority)

11.  Citation analysis can give additional records. (be
aware of different policies especially between EU
en US)
 A manual check is needed.
b) Citation search

12.  No standardization of company names.
 Manually corrections are necessary!
Helpful 
 Corporate Trees (most providers have one)
 Derwent Company Codes ( Link )
 Standardization initiatives (Univ. of Leuven)
KUL/EUROSTAT: Method for harmonizing applicants names
c) Patent assignee names

13. d) Classifications
Absolutely necessary.
Keywords only is insufficient and will miss a lot of records,
especially in new technologies.
A global classification system is most preferred, like IPC and CPC.
Warning 1: Not all documents have a CPC ,10-30% of the families
do not have a CPC assigned, mainly records coming from Japan,
China, Korea and Russia.
For details about coverage see the CPC website www.cpcinfo.org
Warning 2: be aware that not all relevant documents are classified
correctly!

14. e) Regions
Which countries do you want to include  depend on
the topic!!
1. Where are the main competitors located?
2. Are all technology areas as important for all regions?
3. For some countries it is hard to retrieve patent
information

15. f) Broad or small topic
Broad topics are seldom useful for landscaping.
Topics like:
Pharma industry, Green energy, Automotive industry,
Nanotechnology are distributed over several classes and
hard to retrieve
Small topics, within a small set of classes, are more
reliable for landscaping.

16. Step 4: Search
Most critical step!
Broad approach is most often the best!
(Include both classes and keywords)
Which database(s)??
(be aware  documents missed at this stage will
never show up later!!)

17. Step 5: Clean up
in order to create a reliable landscape
80-90% relevancy is required
Sometimes a manual clean-up is necessary

18. Step 6: Checking the dataset
Check whether or not your set make sense.
Look if some key patents are included in the set.

19.  Step 7: analyzing, visualization and reporting
 Many tools are available for analyzing the data . Choose
the tool that fits best for purpose
 Visualize only global trends and not specific data. Too
detailed reports will not be read.
 The most important part of the report is the summary!!
(most clients do not read more than the summary page)

21. Summary
(How to create a patent landscape in 7 steps)
 Step 1: Ask the reason for the landscape
 Step 2: Become familiar with the topic
 Step 3: Considerations before starting the search
a) Patent families
b) Citation search
c) Patent assignee names
d) Classifications
e) Regions
f) Broad or small topic
 Step 4: Search
 Step 5: Clean up
 Step 6: Checking the dataset
 Step 7: Analyzing, visualization and reporting

22. Example
 Tsunami Warning systems
 Your company wants to develop a new Tsunami
Warning System. Before starting, they want to know
what is already available on the market, who are the
competitors and what described in IP.

23. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami_warning_system
To become familiar with the topic Wikipedia is
often a good source
Gives, in this case, the very important
information that a tsunami is an earthquake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

24. Considerations and search
 Classifications
 Citations
 Database selection (more than one?)

25. Proposed choices
Text search: example!!
Most probably in Title and abstract and claims
(earthquake) w5? (warning or alarm)
Most probably in full text
(tsunami) w5? (warning or alarm)
Classifications: example!!
(CPC=(G08B21/10 or H04W4/22 or G01V1/008 or H04W76/007 OR
H04W4/06 OR H04W76/002 OR H04W68/00))
or (CPC=NO (records with no CPC)! and (IPC=G08B21/10 or G08B21/00 or
G08B27/00 or G01V1/00 or H04W/22 OR H04W4/22 OR H04W4/06
OR H04M11/04 OR G08B27/00))

27. Possibilities for data clean up
 Exclude old documents
 Exclude Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean records with
only one family member (or other less relevant countries?)
 Exclude German Utility Models, with only one family
member DEU
In this case, at this stage, approx. 2000 records
 Further limitations and clean-up based on the
scope/purpose of the landscape!!

28. Analyzing, visualization and
reporting
After having created the set, there is no preference in the
tool used for analyzing and visualization
Be sure the report (and even the summary) gives answers to
the questions that has been asked.

29. Conclusion
 Patent Landscaping is complex and time consuming!!
 Patent Landscaping has it’s limitations

30. www.patentinformationservices.nl