What is the N/D taxonomy of Classifiers?
The n/d classifiers help with the problem of patent licensing involving companies with large global portfolios in the following scenarios:
Cross-licensing, to help calculate an estimate of a cross-license with another company
Royalty payments attributable to multiple organisations
Monetisation, to compare outcomes of patent sale versus licensing
Acquisitions, to provide objective evidence of potential value when purchasing patent portfolios
Patenting, to correlate portfolios to revenue and market share data
The challenge
The n/d taxonomy was inspired by the trend in litigation and arbitration to focus on global portfolio deals coupled with the inconsistency and bias involved in manual reading and sampling of large cohorts of patents.
While not all patents have equal value there is typically only a small number of high-valued patents, so it is unlikely that all of these will be included in one single portfolio, and when looking at large enough portfolios we can make useful estimates as the the relative strength of portfolios.
The solution
The n/d taxonomy helps calculate the number of patents in any technology that are owned by one company (the numerator, n), and the total population of families with a US grant (the denominator, d). This can be used to compare two companies portfolios, not just against each other, but against all patents covering the technology.
How was the n /d taxonomy developed?
The n/d taxonomy of classifiers was created in collaboration with AST, the leading provider of patent defence solutions. AST has developed a list of technology classifiers based on market research conducted over the past 10 years and has analysed more than 100,000 patents.
The n/d taxonomy helps with the problem of patent licensing involving companies with large global portfolios in the following scenarios:
Cross-licensing, to help calculate an estimate of a cross-license with another company
Royalty payments attributable to multiple organisations
Monetisation, to compare outcomes of patent sale versus licensing
Acquisitions, to provide objective evidence of potential value when purchasing patent portfolios
Patenting, to correlate portfolios to revenue and market share data
How to create the n/d report:
Click 'start' in the 'New n/d report' tile of the home page (if you do not see this tile, please speak with a member of the team as it may not be a part of your current subscription)
Select the organisations of interest, or upload a list of patents to simulate a custom portfolio
Click 'next' to name and run the report
Select whether to 'allow overlapping technologies' (default), or 'group in mutually exclusive technologies. (more information on these options can be found here).
Once the report has loaded, click the export report options icon in the top left of the report screen (red square with the arrow and box in it).
From here, select 'n/d report' on the bottom left and download the n/d report as an Excel export:
If you have any questions or require assistance with this type of report, please do reach out to a member of the team on support@cipher.ai
Need help? Request support and we'll connect you with an expert.
Can't wait? Contact us on 02039099222 or email support@cipher.ai