The PVIX scores report is ideal if you wish to review or compare portfolios, and evaluate portfolio strength via an industry recognised score. The Portfolio Value Index score is a metric developed by Unified Patents, and is designed to measure patent portfolio 'value' based on published academic studies. The score is based on three components: Family, Market, and Reputation.

Please note that whilst reference is made here to portfolio value, it is better referenced in relation to relative portfolio strengths and weaknesses indicated by score within the PVIX report. Whether we're referring to value or quality, or which patent family is the 'best', we can but provide a score based on certain criteria in order to score the relative strength or weakness of a portfolio or patent family.

More information on the PVIX methodology can be found here: Portfolio Value Index (PVIX) Methodology

This information is instantly available in your Cipher PVIX report and is presented as an Excel download containing five main tabs: Summary, Histogram, Size comparison, Time comparison and Data.

In this article we will look at how the data is split by Organisation, Technology, by size and over time, and how to interpret the scores within your report.

The summary tab provides you with two summary tables.

The first table provides the total PVIX score of the overall portfolio strength of a portfolio, broken down by technology. This table normalises the score for size and strength, for instance you could have a portfolio of half the size and twice the strength, scoring the same as a portfolio of twice the size and half the strength.

Total row - Total score for each organisation's portfolio

The second table provides the mean average PVIX score of the portfolio broken down by technology. This table illustrates on average how good are the patents of a particular company in a particular technology area, shown as an average when compared to others. The average score is across size and strength in order to enable a direct comparison across portfolios e.g. ignoring the volume, who’s strong in what area – ‘Company A’ is good in ‘technology X’.

Overall row - Overall average score for each organisation's portfolio

The histogram tab provides you with two further tables, to summarise the distribution of portfolio score by organisations and technologies.

The first table provides a PVIX Histogram for organisations, providing the distribution of their portfolio by score. The table provides the percentage of patent families in each score category for each organisation, and for example the column ‘65’ represents the ’60-65’ PVIX score results.

In the previous summary tab, you might have seen two companies with an overall average score of 60. ‘Company C’ has an average of 60 and the majority of their portfolio falls into this score, however ‘Company D’ have a significant amount of their portfolio with a score of 40-55. The same can apply where an organisation has a similar average score, but half of their portfolio may have a high score of 70. These reflect very different portfolios.

In reviewing your competitors, the part of the portfolio with a score of 50 you may ignore, but the part of their portfolio with a score in the 70’s might pose a problem for you. The organisation and technology histograms provide a spread of these scores visually.

The second table provides a PVIX Histogram for technologies of your report, providing the distribution of their portfolio by score also.

The ‘whole report’ row, provides an average of the distribution of scores across all of the portfolios contained within the report.

The ‘All families’ row, provides an average for all families, in all technologies in the world as a basis for comparison to your report.

If you’re concerned about the strength of your portfolio and these tables show that you’re scoring lower than your competitors in this space, you could argue that you have too many patents, and so you may look to cull some of your lower scoring patents.

Alternatively, it may be the case that your patents are just scoring lower than your competitors and you need to improve your portfolio by investing more money.

Handy Hint:

The raw data of the report is shown in the ‘Data’ tab should you wish to filter by company and technology to make comparisons between select companies and select technology areas. Alternatively, you can filter your Cipher report first to these companies and technologies, and run the PVIX report again.

The size comparison charts break apart the number of families and the strength (average score).

The first chart provides the overall position for the whole portfolio that appears in the report, split by Organisation.

You can clearly see who has the most (Y axis), but you can also clearly see the size to strength comparison in these charts, as the average PVIX score is shown on the X axis.

The following charts in this tab show the size and strength comparison broken out by technology.

The time comparison heatmap charts provide the average PVIX score by priority year, shown by organisation, and by individual technologies in the charts below that:

It allows you to see when the companies contained within your report were filing their best patents (their highest scoring patents).

If your highest scoring patents were filed in 2002, and scores have been low since then, this could signify a problem for the portfolio.

Green results signify highest scoring patents; red results signify lowest scoring patents.

The scores in the first chart that are split by organisation often correlate to the individual technologies per organisation, which can be reviewed in the next charts in this tab.

These charts show PVIX score by priority year for the individual technologies of your report, still broken down by organisation.

The ‘Overall’ row at the bottom of each time comparison heatmap, provides the score split by priority year for all portfolios contained within the report.

The subsequent technology time comparison charts, show the average score per priority year across all organisations of the report for that technology area.

The raw data of the report is shown in the ‘Data’ tab should you wish to filter by Organisation, Technology, Cipher family ID, Priority year, and PVIX score:

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