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Five applications of XLUS
Five applications of XLUS
1. Supports making of
licensing decisions
Fig.1
Figure 1 is a radar chart showing part of the U.S. patent portfolio of a U.S. electronics company. This company’s patents (red dots) are located a substantial distance from other companies’ patents (white dots) and form a portfolio which seems to provide an effective entry barrier. This company successfully sold their portfolio including about eighty U.S. patents for six million dollars in a recent auction. The patents shown in Figure 1 are some of the sold patents.
If you intend to license out or sell patents and are able to show using XLUS that your patent portfolio has established an effective entry barrier, the royalty percentage or selling price may be increased. If you are a licensee or buyer of patents and have successfully proved that similar patents exist, you may take a better position in negotiations. Furthermore, when you have no idea who may be interested in your patents, you may find a candidate, who has patents similar to your own and is interested in expanding their portfolio by obtaining your patents.
2. Supports making of
M&A decisions
Fig.2
Figure 2 shows parts of Japanese patent application portfolios of two pharmaceutical companies concerning anticancer agents. Patents of one company (light blue dots) are positioned in the center of the distribution of another company’s patents (pink dots). In April 2008, the latter company merged with the former company. It can be seen from Figure 2 that the latter company has strengthened their anti-cancer-drug discovery technology by obtaining patents of the company they merged with.
XLUS enables an M&A decision maker to be informed as to whether or not a synergistic effect can be expected with the deal being considered.
3. Supports
Patent portfolio management
Fig.3
Figure 3 shows the U.S. patent portfolio of an innovative U.S. electronics company, which includes 2,260 patents issued between 1990 and 2008. In the lower left area of the radar chart, there is a large cluster (red-circled cluster), which includes patents concerning their portable music player.
Through the use of XLUS, users can visually understand their own company’s patent portfolio and can take appropriate measures to optimize the return on investments. Specifically, redundant patents may be abandoned to reduce maintenance cost. Furthermore, if the number of patents relating to an important technology does not seem sufficient compared to a competitor, it can easily be grasped that it is advisable to file additional applications.
4. Supports
R&D trend analysis
Fig.4
1993-1998
1999-2004
2005-2008
Figure 4 shows three radar charts, which respectively indicate Japanese patent applications concerning “biodiesel” published in three periods (1993-1998; 1999-2004; and 2005-2008). It can be seen from these charts that the number of patent applications positioned in the central area, which relate to manufacturing processes, increased during the period 2005-2008.
Through the use of XLUS, a user can obtain such R&D trend analysis data within a short time (e.g., ten minutes). As a result of simply inputting the keyword “biodiesel” in the query box of XLUS, the patent searching, clustering and visualization are performed automatically.
5. Supports
Prior art searches
Fig.5(a)
Fig.5(b)
Figure 5(a) shows the positional relationship between USP6,237,565 (‘565 patent) held by Teleflex Inc. and USP5,010,782, which was used to invalidate the ‘565 patent by KSR International Co. in court. By simply inputting “6237565” to XLUS and setting the number of relevant patents to be retrieved at 1,000, the output shown in Figure 5(a) can be obtained.
If the search results (1,000 patents) are displayed as a list in the same manner as results of ordinal search engines, all of the patents would have to be checked in a similar manner. On the other hand, by viewing the radar chart of XLUS, a user can prioritize which patents are to be checked. That is, patents included in clusters that are positioned near the cluster including the ‘565 patent should be checked first.
