INDEXING INNOVATION

Technology Review has teamed with CHI Research of Haddon Heights, NJ, to produce the Patent Scorecard, an industry-by-

industry ranking of corporate patent portfolios. CHI combines the number of patents a company receives with other indicators to flesh out this deeper picture

of innovation. Here are the specifics:

Technological Strength: This figure, the basis of the rankings, provides an overall assessment of a company’s intellectual-property power. It is calculated by

multiplying the number of a company’s U.S. patents by its current-impact index (see below).

Number of Patents: The number of U.S. patents awarded, excluding design and other special-case inventions.

Current-Impact Index: This measure showcases the broader significance of a company’s patents by examining how often its U.S. patents from the previous five

years are cited as prior art in the current year’s batch. A value of 1.0 represents average citation frequency, so, for example, a value of 1.4 would indicate a

company’s patents were cited 40 percent more often than the average.

Science Linkage: Some patents cite scientific papers as prior art. This value shows the average number of scientific references listed in a company’s

U.S. patents. A high figure indicates a company closer to the cutting edge than competitors with lower values.

Technology Cycle Time: This indicator of a firm’s speed in turning leading-edge technology into intellectual property is defined as the median age (in years) of

the U.S. patents cited as prior art in the company’s patents.

footnotes

1. Figures include values for all subsidiaries and wholly owned companies.

2. Embol-X was acquired in 2003 by Edwards Lifesciences, which is not listed on the scorecard.

3. Patent total may include patents reassigned to Avaya after it spun off from Lucent in 2000.