IPIB: How competitive is your IP service firm?
Want hard answers to tough questions? The IP Industry Base (IPIB), a database developed by the Competitive Intelligence Group at the Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy (IMW), Leipzig, might provide some.
The IPIB seeks to provide transparency in the IP Service Industry by providing company profiles for each IP service provider, based on publicly available information - i.e., primarily patent databases. It is free to use on a "fair use" basis. For more information, have a look at the slides for the presentation by Lutz Maicher (University of Jena) held on the occasion of the EPO’s Patent Information Conference 2017 on 8 November 2017 inBudapest Sofia (this post is largely based on the presentation; the presentation being much more comprehensive). The IPIB aims to
For Maiwald, the RSI reveals that in IPC A61P (specific therapeutic activity of chemical compounds or medicinal preparations), they have a lot of expertise - 860 practitioners filed patents in A61P and only 16 have more practical expertise than Maiwald. In C09C (treatment of inorganic materials, other than fibrous fillers, to enhance their pigmenting or filling properties), Maiwald is even the "most experienced" patent firm in the database, having worked on 136 patents in this class. More brutal to some will be that in the rightmost column of the expertise tab, the firm with the most expertise in a given field is listed.
If you are interested in finding a firm with relevant expertise in a given technical field, you can enter the IPC code in a search input and you get a ranking based on the number of patents worked on by the firms in this class. For F02 (combustion engines; hot-gas or combustion-product engine plants), this reveals that Dehns Ltd, London, is the absolute market leader with 1,958 patents worked on, followed by Cabinet Beau de Loménie (CBDL), Paris.
In the "competitors" tab of the IPIB, you can find the main competitors of your firm, arranged by "doing the same, globally", "doing the same, in similar markets" and "doing the same, in similar regions".
The IPIB also assigns a global "Performance Score". In their own words "the IPIB [Performance] score aims to assess the performance of IP Service Provider by following the theory of the resource-based view. Each capacity of an IP Service Provider, which is observable for the IPIB, adds points to the company's score. In example, having an office in Munich adds more points than having an office in Hannover. The rationale behind is that surviving in an environment with high competition indicates strong skills. Furthermore, a crowded environment provides access to a denser knowledge base. This is access is also considered as a valuable resource of the IP Service Provider. The IPIB score is re-calculated on a regular basis in order to provide insights into the industry dynamics." I know what a lot of you are going to be doing today… as mentioned, IPIB is free, so check your score. There is a link provided to correct incomplete or wrong data (the "key employments" tab seems outdated in most instances, for example). Although this does not pertain to your score, I am afraid.
The IPIB seeks to provide transparency in the IP Service Industry by providing company profiles for each IP service provider, based on publicly available information - i.e., primarily patent databases. It is free to use on a "fair use" basis. For more information, have a look at the slides for the presentation by Lutz Maicher (University of Jena) held on the occasion of the EPO’s Patent Information Conference 2017 on 8 November 2017 in
- be (mostly) complete for Europe,
- reveal a significant part of the US market,
- indicate the structure of important spots in Asia (like Singapore) and
- be a proxy for the situation of the IP Service industry in the rest of the world.
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| Maiwald's expertise in A61P and A61Q (screenshot from IPIB) |
IPIB further assesses the specific expertise of each firm based on the type of patents it worked on. A specialisation profile of a patent agent firm is the set of all IPC classes in which the firm is significantly more active than expected from its own activity profile and the whole market activities. The IPIB uses a Relative Specialisation Index (RSI) which allows to generate idiotypic and dichotomous specialisation profiles for each patent agent firm. The RSI specialisation is based on the the theory of comparative advantage and the ARCA measure.
For Maiwald, the RSI reveals that in IPC A61P (specific therapeutic activity of chemical compounds or medicinal preparations), they have a lot of expertise - 860 practitioners filed patents in A61P and only 16 have more practical expertise than Maiwald. In C09C (treatment of inorganic materials, other than fibrous fillers, to enhance their pigmenting or filling properties), Maiwald is even the "most experienced" patent firm in the database, having worked on 136 patents in this class. More brutal to some will be that in the rightmost column of the expertise tab, the firm with the most expertise in a given field is listed.
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| Maiwald's main competitors in similar markets |
In the "competitors" tab of the IPIB, you can find the main competitors of your firm, arranged by "doing the same, globally", "doing the same, in similar markets" and "doing the same, in similar regions".
The IPIB also assigns a global "Performance Score". In their own words "the IPIB [Performance] score aims to assess the performance of IP Service Provider by following the theory of the resource-based view. Each capacity of an IP Service Provider, which is observable for the IPIB, adds points to the company's score. In example, having an office in Munich adds more points than having an office in Hannover. The rationale behind is that surviving in an environment with high competition indicates strong skills. Furthermore, a crowded environment provides access to a denser knowledge base. This is access is also considered as a valuable resource of the IP Service Provider. The IPIB score is re-calculated on a regular basis in order to provide insights into the industry dynamics." I know what a lot of you are going to be doing today… as mentioned, IPIB is free, so check your score. There is a link provided to correct incomplete or wrong data (the "key employments" tab seems outdated in most instances, for example). Although this does not pertain to your score, I am afraid.
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| Maiwald's IPIB Score from January 2016 to April 2017 (screenshot from IPIB) |
