The phrase ‘patently obvious’ is used in many contexts, from political exchanges to newspaper op-ed columns. Curiously, it is rarely used in the realm of actual patents, but in the case of General Electric’s (GE) HealthCare division, its use seems entirely appropriate.

In early 2023, GE made the decision to spin off GE HealthCare, and immediately following the move the new entity started its M&A strategy by acquiring two companies of its own – Caption Health and IMACTIS. At this early stage, is it possible to infer whether these were sound investments? Six months later, there is still a way to go before full year financial results are posted along with other financial data. However, Digital Science company IFI CLAIMS Patent Services – a global patent database provider for application developers, data scientists, and product managers – can gain insights by looking into the patents the newly enlarged GE HealthCare now holds.

Patents = Strategic Insights

It should be ‘patently obvious’, but checking companies’ patents can be a part of any due diligence process before an investment decision is made. Not only does this help understand risk and technology overlaps, it can also be used to determine where R&D efforts are currently focused in the target acquisition, and in turn set the strategy for the newly merged entity. Analyzing a company’s patent holdings in the midst of M&A dealings provides insights, such as: 

• Strategic direction of companies (i.e., such as the extent to which they are making strides in AI)
• Unique takes on M&A transactions as it is possible to determine – based on companies’ technologies – if core competencies overlap or not with the acquiring company
• Ascertaining if a company’s core competencies are enhanced or not by the acquisitions it’s made

IFI’s latest acquisition report takes a look at GE HealthCare’s acquisitions of IMACTIS and Caption Health’s patented technologies to determine the innovative direction of the company.

‘A good fit’

So what insights can be gleaned from patent data about GE HealthCare and its nascent M&A strategy? According to the report, the acquisition of Caption Health and IMACTIS were a ‘good fit’ for GE HealthCare. Both the acquisitions point towards GE HealthCare’s continued growth in terms of both AI and the application of AI to its existing core technologies. Specifically:

• IMACTIS is a tech healthcare company that offers, among other things, the provision of 3D virtual imaging to surgical navigation
• Caption Health focuses on providing AI capabilities and image data generation to ultrasound technologies

You can see from the chart below that GE HealthCare competes with a number of major companies in establishing AI-related patents, which surged in 2019-2020 before dipping in 2021. As such, the acquisitions in the early part of 2023 of companies that are focused on technology and AI in particular seem to be a good strategic move, especially given the furore around AI technology since late 2022.

What the data says

The report concludes that both Caption Health and IMACTIS make sense for GE HealthCare for several reasons. In the current competitive climate, Caption Health adds necessary AI capabilities while IMACTIS adds new dimensions to the suite of patents it has with 3D virtual images. So overall, it’s a gold star for GE HealthCare when it comes to enhancing its patent – and future commercial – strategy. Isn’t that obvious?

Three key takeaways

1. Digital Science’s IFI CLAIMS Patent Services – a global patent database provider for application developers, data scientists, and product managers – can help customers gain insights by looking into the patents held by firms, such as newly enlarged GE HealthCare.

2. IFI’s latest acquisition report takes a look at GE HealthCare’s acquisitions of IMACTIS and Caption Health’s patented technologies to determine the innovative direction of the company – the report concludes that both Caption Health and IMACTIS make sense for GE HealthCare for a number of reasons.

3. Checking companies’ patents should be a part of any due diligence process before any corporate investment decision is made, especially in pharmaceuticals sector.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

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The Role of NLP in Inclusive Data Curation of Patent Information

CLAIMS Direct is a global patent database created by IFI CLAIMS Patent Services (IFI). NLP allows for the vast amount of information contained in patents to be applied to many situations. Through the curation of data, such as the standardisation of organisations, data can be amalgamated from a range of original sources.  Using NLP, this patent information can also be translated into English from over 40 languages. By curating the data in this way, researchers can quickly access information from a broad range of original sources.

IFI receives inquiries from companies that require access to patent information for a range of use cases. From discovering important new invention types for use in investment decisions, to analysing the effects of government programmes on regional economic stimulus, the analysis of patent documents is becoming more widespread.

The growth of inexpensive and ever more powerful computing has led to easier methods for extracting meaningful data from patents, and NLP is a prime example of this. This technology is absolutely vital because, according to the 2019 report from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 3.3 million patent applications were filed globally in 2018. This is almost twice the 1.85 million filed in 2008. There are more than 14 million active patents globally.  With this many applications, it would be impossible to manually search for relevant information. Enter NLP.

Using NLP to Overcome the Language Barrier of Global Patent Information

With so many global patents that can contain important information, accurate translations are a must. Machine translation, or the use of computer software to perform translations, has been used for decades to translate patents. Recent advances employing NLP are speeding up this process. Early attempts looked at each word or phrase and translated it, however new techniques look at the overall context to provide higher quality results.

CLAIMS Direct, the global patent database and platform from IFI,  uses Google Translate to convert documents in 48 languages to English. Based on neural network technology, one of the several driving forces behind NLP, Google Translate offers an exceptional level of accuracy. It overcomes problems found in most older phrase-based machine translation systems that do not sample a large enough segment of text to produce a proper translation. Using a large end-to-end network, this technology translates whole sentences or paragraphs at a time to provide context, and uses machine learning to continually make improvements over time.

Patent documents are often used by organisations and individuals who seek to patent something themselves. To be awarded a patent, the concept cannot infringe on another patent, and must also be a novel idea. Making a mistake by missing an existing publication or previously granted patent can lead to costly infringement lawsuits. The stakes are high and there will always be a big incentive to get it right. It is, therefore, common for many people to be involved in researching previous patent data, often employing multiple search methods.

While the exact format of a patent can vary by region, they have a number of structured data elements in common including invention title, inventor, submission data, active or inactive status, etc. This information, stored in named fields, is accessible in databases and is easy to search for. However, the body of a patent can contain far more useful free range text, or unstructured data, that is not parsed into fields and is difficult to search for with keywords and legacy search engines.

Search tools that use NLP can reveal crucial ideas contained in patent literature more easily than traditional methods which rely on keyword matches. Patent documents can be written using language which is meant to obscure the true nature of the invention, with the aim of keeping the subject matter hidden from competitors. Sometimes even technical subject matter experts cannot clearly see the idea being put forward. With the use of semantic and NLP algorithms, improved accuracy is achieved by ingesting large areas of text, examining the context, and making connections that are not otherwise obvious. The use of synonyms can also uncover new and relevant documents. Search intent of the user is better understood, and uniting all of these capabilities saves a huge amount of time.

Traditional Use Cases for NLP in Patent Documents

In business activities where intellectual property (IP) traditionally plays a large role, such as engineering and developing new drugs, some very successful new products incorporating NLP are improving the patent search process. Many clients of IFI have used CLAIMS Direct to build features such as:

• Integration with other data sources: In addition to patents, searchable indexes can include scientific publications, internal research, websites, and other industry specific knowledge sources.

• Text mining with specific vocabulary: This is especially important to the related industries of life sciences, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. For example, when developing new therapies, gene and disease target scanning can find research from another company that may be applicable to a new invention.

• Clustering and categorisation: While patents from most countries use a common classification system, it is limited, and not industry specific. Some applications use pre-built tools tailored to different business requirements, while others allow users to set up their own requirements. The resulting visualisations provide quick insights about the latest inventions in any given field.

• Relevancy scoring; With traditional search tools, results are ranked. Taking this a step further and providing a percentage score for relevancy shows the user a more finely-tuned answer.
• Results delivered in an interactive framework; Search results can be refined by choosing “more like” in a field of related concepts. For example, when searching for “wind” a semantic application could give results that include wind turbines, wind-up clocks, and wind speed. The user can then select the most relevant category.

New Use Cases for NLP in Patents

Advances in NLP have resulted in it becoming a lot easier to extract important information which used to be hidden in patent documents. This has led to a range of new use cases.

Patents are making their way onto the trading floor. Fund managers want to know which technologies are on the verge of quick growth, and who owns them, in order to inform investment decisions. Here, well indexed, easy to search patent data is crucial. By adding a data source such as CLAIMS Direct to their fast-moving algorithmic trading systems, they are utilising NLP to find hidden tips, enabling analysts to create better reports.

Management consulting companies are getting in on the action too. They need to keep clients informed about the most up-to-date technology and competitive intelligence across the globe. Knowing when relevant patents have been published or granted can be a game changer. NLP offers consultants the ability to quickly uncover trends important to their clients, while improving efficiency through automated workflows. Clustering visualisations makes the information easier to understand.

As the technology continues to evolve, more use cases for patent information will emerge. We look forward to implementing these advances into our processes at IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, to continue to be as inclusive of, and useful to, the wider research community as we can possibly be.

SEE MORE POSTS IN THIS NLP SERIES

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The ten millionth US Patent will be granted on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. Is this just another number, or a true milestone for intellectual property? It depends who you ask.

According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (UPSTO), “The issuance of patent 10 million is an exceptional milestone. It is a timely and relevant opportunity to promote the importance of innovation, the ubiquity of intellectual property, and the history of America’s patent system.”

The office is marking the occasion with some special projects including:

• A new patent cover design (shown above)
• A 10 million patents microsite featuring an interesting timeline of granted patents
• The Ten for 10m project, encouraging media outlets to write stories on important inventions in their respective industries

On the other hand, some feel there’s nothing to celebrate because the US Patent system is in dire need of reform. Additionally, the US also no longer leads the world in the number of yearly granted patents—last year China granted 420,000 patents compared to 320,000 granted in the US.

One thing that’s for certain is that the rate of innovation and invention has continued to accelerate. It took four years to move from patent 8 million to patent 9 million (2011-2015) and three years to move from patent 9 million to patent 10 million.

Since patents are one of the richest sources of technical information available, it makes sense to capture and utilize the knowledge in this exponentially growing knowledge base. The UPSTO states that 80% of the information contained in patents can’t be found anywhere else, and other experts believe the figure is closer to 90%. Industries including life sciences, medical devices, and high tech are mining the data to learn about advances in their fields as well as to avoid infringing on technology that has already been patented. Investment professionals leverage patent information to monitor the R&D activity of technology-focused companies.

To be successful in this endeavor, it’s essential to use the highest quality patent data available. With patent data growing rapidly, information management has gotten harder. At IFI CLAIMS^®, we understand that major decisions and millions of dollars hinge on reliable information about intellectual property. That’s why we have specialists who monitor the quality of incoming data from the millions of global records added to CLAIMS^® Direct each month.

Everyone can agree that patents are a key indicator that innovation that leads to economic success. And ten million US patents is a lot!

The post What Can We Learn From Ten Million US Patents? appeared first on Digital Science.

2017 was a busy year for the U.S. Patent and Trademark office (USPTO), which issued 320,003 utility grants, according to IFI Claims, up 5.2 percent from the previous year and more than double the 157,284 granted in 2007.

• IBM marks 25th anniversary as list leader
• U.S. grants hit record high and double from a decade ago
• Trending Technologies: e-cigarettes, 3D printing, machine learning & autonomous vehicles

Mike Baycroft, CEO, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services said,

“2017 was an impressive year for U.S. patents. We’re seeing twice as many patents generated today as there were a decade ago. We’re seeing IBM nearly tripling its annual patent counts by going from 3,000 plus in 2007 to breaking the 9,000 mark this past year.”

Many leading companies from 2016 continued to dominate in 2017. Facebook and BOE Technology Group made large gains.

• IBM received the most utility grants in 2017. Their total of 9,045 is a 12% increase over their 8,088 total in 2016.
• Among companies that received the most patents, Intel Corp and LG Electronics both moved up two places in the rankings – putting them at #4 and #5 in IFI Claims’ rankings.
• BOE Technology Group made a big jump from #40 in 2016 to #21 in 2017. Based in Beijing, BOE produces display and sensing devices.
• Facebook Inc jumped into the Top 50.  Their 660 utility grants give them a ranking of #50 – an impressive increase over their #86 ranking in 2016.

Top 10 Patent Assignees

View the Top 50 list of US patent assignees to see more companies.

The analysis also included a report on the fast growing technologies. The new high-growth areas include e-cigarettes, 3D-printing, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, moulding materials, hybrid vehicles, aerial drones, and food. These are not the largest patent classifications but the ones that have shown the fastest growth over the last five years.

The automotive sector is rapidly developing new technologies, including patents in areas such as unmanned vehicle navigation and advanced manufacturing technology.

• Companies showing impressive gains are Japanese automobile parts manufacturer Denso Corp (#35 with an increase of 23% grants from 2016), Honeywell International (#39 with an increase of 27%), Halliburton Energy Services (#44 with an increase of 35%) and Chinese Shenzhen China Star Optoelctronics (#45 with an increase of 44%).
• Toyota, Ford, and Hyundai also showed sizable growth.

The computing, telecommunications, and medical patent classifications continue to be strong.

• Computers (G06F) and telecommunications (H04L) remained in the top two spots.
• 2017 saw a big jump in specific types of data processing systems (patent class G06Q). This business methods patent class has been volatile over the last few years due to recent court decisions regarding patentability.
• Pharmaceuticals (A61K) and Diagnostics/Surgical (A61B) showed healthy gains.

Find out more information about IFI Claims and their annual list here.

The post Top Patent Recipients and Emerging Technology Trends in the US in 2017 Announced by IFI Claims appeared first on Digital Science.

Digital Science targets businesses which complement our ecosystem of services in the research and scientific services space – this investment bolsters our portfolio of technology tools and services to support the research and healthcare sectors.

Located in New Haven, Connecticut, USA and with satellite offices in Germany and Spain, IFI CLAIMS provides continually updated global patent data to leading patent application providers and corporate researchers worldwide. Comprised of more than 100 million records from 90 countries, including 53 million full text records from 18 jurisdictions, the IFI CLAIMS patent database is accessible through the industry-leading CLAIMS Direct API. Application developers can use CLAIMS Direct to quickly prototype and deploy operational patent search and analysis solutions.  Researchers can use CLAIMS Direct to deploy private patent databases in the cloud, or inside the corporate firewall.

Michael Hock, the Managing Director of Holtzbrinck Digital says of the news:

“As research institutions focus on increasing their tech and knowledge transfer for commercial and competitive advantage, patent data offer a useful lens through which to view the impact of academia and research on the economy.  This makes the addition of IFI CLAIMS to our investment portfolio a perfect fit for us. In addition to sharing very similar goals, there is also significant potential for co-operation and integration with other products in our portfolio of companies, including Altmetric, ÜberResearch, Labguru, BioRAFT and Figshare.”

Mike Baycroft, CEO of IFI CLAIMS Patent Services and Fairview Research adds:

“We are very pleased to be working with the team at Digital Science.  This investment will allow IFI CLAIMS to expand its data coverage and develop new services for our clients.  IFI adds a new dimension to the Digital Science portfolio and we are looking forward to a bright future together”.

To learn more about this news, you can see the official press release here and you can follow IFI CLAIMS on Twitter, they are @ificlaims.

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