FAQ on Ocean Tomo PatentRatings Data
How many patents have ratings (IPQ® scores)?
We rate all US utility patents in all fields of technology. IPQ scores exist on 99.6% (Based on December 07 internal audit) of all US utility patents issued since 1/1/1976. In limited cases, errors or gaps in obtaining data from sources, (i.e. USPTO) prevent us from calculating an IPQ score, which accounts for a tiny percent of un-rated patents.
Do IPQ scores change over time?
Yes, IPQ scores can vary over time. As new US patents are granted, the new information is used by our statistical model to adjust scores.
How often are the scores updated?
All patent information is updated monthly on the 20th of each calendar month. Monthly updates include new patents, updated IPQ scores, updated patent Assignee information, and updated expiration information. For example, a patent issued on Tuesday, May 27th will be posted on oceantomo.com/ratings with its IPQ score by June 20th.
Does Ocean Tomo PatentRatings provide ratings for pre-grant Patent Publications or Applications?
No, currently we do not rate US patent applications prior to issuance due to the uncertainty of patent issuance and a lack of availability of critical information needed for the IPQ computation.
What Factors are used in computing IPQ score?
There are over 50 factors and over 100 input items that make up IPQ scores. Each factor was independently identified as correlating either positively or negatively with patent maintenance (i.e. whether or not a patent's maintenance fees were paid). These factors were then analyzed in a regression analysis to determine the coefficients and weighting factors which are ultimately used in calculating the IPQ score. The factors can generally be categorized as Technology factors (e.g. US Patent Class or IPC), Disclosure factors (e.g. the length of the detailed description), Claims factors (e.g. the number or length of independent claims) and Prosecution factors (e.g. the number of rejections received). For theory and details, please contact us for more information. Additional information about the IPQ score and its use can be found located here.
What factors go into computing Relevance scores?
The PatentRatings Relevance score is a quantitative representation of the technological relatedness of any one US patent to any other. The relevance score fundamentally represents the probability (on a scale from zero to one) that the first patents is directly citationally related to the second (i.e. that one directly cites the other), independent of the actuality of their citational relationship. Relevance scores are calculated by analyzing up to six generations of citational information (i.e. one generation includes all patents cited by or citing the reference patent). The analysis essentially determines the degree of overlap between the citational relationships of the two reference patents, and treats more overlapping citational relationships as indicating a higher probability of the two being directly citationally related. Our Patent Relevance database contains over 4.5 billion (as of December 2007) patent to patent Relevance relationships above a threshold value of 0.05. Typically over 1000 patents are mapped as “Relevant” to a single patent in a rank order (.999 to 0).
Why does a patent show a different assignee on Ocean Tomo PatentRatings than other websites?
Most other patent websites show only the “original” Assignee for a patent, that is the Assignee as reflected on the patent's face. The Original Assignee information on those sites is not updated if and when a patent is subsequently re-assigned to another entity. Therefore, PatentRatings uses an updated “Current Assignee” based on the USPTO’s Assignment database records in order to properly reflect the most recent owner of a patent. Of course, even this data is subject to a certain error rate caused by errors in the USPTO data itself. If a patent is simultaneously held by multiple assignees, we show the first current patent assignee of record by default.
Are the ratings comprehensive of our company’s portfolio?
Typically patents are assigned at an assignee level, and our system is also accessed that way. Many global companies have multiple companies under their umbrella, as a parent company. The parent company has many “entities” or assignees, and they initially need to make sure to have a complete list of “entities” or assignees where patents have been assigned. For our subscription clients, we can aggregate the company’s “entities” or assignees; it’s offered as part of the annual subscription service.
How does Ocean Tomo PatentRatings determine whether or not a patent is expired?
Every US patent will eventually expire for one of two reasons: it will reach its full term, or the patent owner will fail to pay a maintenance fee. Calculating the full-term expiration date (also called the “Nominal Expiration” date) of a patent is a complicated process, which involves accounting for applicable PTO rules, filing dates, term extensions, terminal disclaimers, and other factors. PatentRatings calculates a nominal expiration date for each US patent based on all available information gathered from the USPTO. If the Nominal Expiration date is in the past, PatentRatings will list the patent as Expired.
Alternatively, if a patent owner fails to pay a maintenance fee, the US Patent Office will determine that the patent has bee abandoned for failure to pay maintenance fees. Every Tuesday, the USPTO publishes a list of patents abandoned for failure to pay maintenance fees in its Official Gazette (OG). We typically wait until a patent is listed in the OG as abandoned before listing it as such on PatentRatings. The PatentRatings web system does not currently reflect information resulting from a court finding that a patent is invalid or un-enforceable.
How long is a term of a patent?
As a general rule, a patent that was filed on or after June 8, 1995 expires twenty (20) years after filing date. If the patent was filed before June 8, 1995, it is either twenty (20) years after filing date, or seventeen (17) years after the issue date, whichever is later.
There are other factors in determining whether or not a patent is in force and are detailed in the previous question . For more details please contact Ocean Tomo PatentRatings.
Why does PatentRatings show my patent as being expired when I don’t believe it is?
While we generally believe that the information we receive from the Patent Office is complete and up to date, that is not always the case. Occasionally gaps in either the completeness or the timing of information we obtain from the PTO lead to incorrect indications of patent expiration. For example, a patent that is listed in the OG (Official Gazette published by USPTO) as expired, but which is subsequently revived through a late maintenance fee payment may be reflected as “Expired” until we obtain updated information.
What is PEV? (Found in Company- Competitive Intelligence module)
PEV stands for Patent Exchange Value. PEV is computed at a patent level and is used to compare relative "asset value" of patents. PEV should be a supplement to IPQ in assessing a company's overall patent portfolio. In the simplest form, PEV is a time adjusted measure of IPQ.
PEV is based on three factors: IPQ score, age of the patent, and technology obsolescence rates. IPQ score is a patent quality measure - a proxy for value but not sufficient as relative value measure. Since patents have different time(s) remaining, it must be treated like any other assets with finite time. An asset has to be depreciated to assess true “net asset” value, and a patent is effectively a “wasting asset” due to term limits. Therefore, this “time” dimension is incorporated into PEV to depreciate/adjust for the age of the patent and rates of obsolescence which varies by technologies.
The number can range from 0 to hundreds depending on the patents. A brand new patent with an IPQ score of 100 has a PEV of 1.0. If a particular patent has a PEV of 5.0, then this may be interpreted as this patent being 5X more valuable than a patent that has PEV of 1.0, theoretically speaking, since it is not a market based measure. Assuming all other factors are equal, a patent that has 18 years remaining and a patent that has 1 year remaining could have the same IPQ score, but when compared by PEVs, a patent with 1 year remaining will have substantially less PEV than the one that has 17 more years remaining
How can I report errors to Ocean Tomo PatentRatings?
If you encounter any errors in the PatentRatings data or system, please send an email to contactratings@oceantomo.com describing the details of the error, and we will respond promptly. We greatly appreciate your feedback, and we are always striving to improve the Ocean Tomo PatentRatings web system.