Measuring technological patent scope by semantic analysis of patent claims – An indicator for valuating patents

Abstract

One of the most crucial tasks in patent analysis concerns valuating patents as intellectual properties which embody financial assets, and yield license fees or even competitive advantages. There are several approaches that deal with finding indicators of a patent's value, some in terms of patent scope. So far, the available work is incomplete in various respects. Overcoming deficits caused by an insufficient use of bibliometric indicators, this paper provides a normalized technological patent scope indicator through a semantic patent analysis of patent claims. By providing regressions between the patent scope and several indicators, this paper shows that the patent scope in the case of the three technologies DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc, follows several theories of prior work. This work tackles theoretical implications, as it manages to operationalize Knight's theory (hash mark analogy of broad and narrow patent claims) by a data driven approach and enhances recent work by means of a normalized semantic patent scope, based on patent claims instead of bibliometric data. Finally, managers may profit from a higher resolution regarding decision making for competitor analysis and M&A-questions, as this new indicator describes how broadly assignees define their technologies semantically, thereby offering a source for a patent's value.