Developing innovative technologies is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses

PatSnap, the world’s leading provider of Research & Development (R&D) analytics, has today announced the launch of Licensee Locator, an analysis tool that enables users to identify and locate potential acquirers or licensees for patented technology.

Developing innovative technologies is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses. In 2017, it is estimated that over US$2 trillion will be spent on R&D worldwide, while the ROI of R&D has dropped by around 65% in the past four decades. Successful innovators must also be able to commercialise their inventions. New technologies are often highly technical, and may require new business models, manufacturing technologies, or different skillsets to bring them to market. In many situations, licensing a technology to an external organisation may be the best approach to commercialisation.

In order to do this, organisations looking to license their technology must be able to identify licensees with the need for and resources to acquire the patent being licensed. Finding licensing partners often comes down to reliance on a sales team or Technology Transfer Office’s existing network and knowledge of the market.

PatSnap’s Licensee Locator playbook takes any patent or technology description and automatically identifies potential acquirers or licensees, based on objective metrics of licensability, revealing suitable organisations which may not otherwise have been considered. This is made possible by its ability to process hundreds of millions of data points about all possible licensees – expanding the potential for commercialisation far beyond the patent owner’s existing network.

Licensee Locator enables users to rapidly:

• Identify and rank a shortlist of potential acquirers or licensees
• Understand how similar each shortlisted company’s existing portfolio is to the technology being offered for licensing
• Review similar patents within a potential licensee’s existing portfolio
• Gauge each company’s likelihood to license this type of technology based on previous licensing deals
• Understand the financial and IP strengths of each shortlisted company

While the big players in an established technology area might be easy to identify, finding suitable licensees in more niche areas is much more challenging. Traditionally, once a shortlist of companies has been identified, the list must be whittled down, accounting for the scale and scope of their existing portfolio, their previous licensing activity and how complimentary or competitive the prospective licensee’s technologies are. Finding the right licensee for an invention can be an extremely time-consuming process, and potentially lucrative opportunities can be easily overlooked.

Ray Chohan, SVP, Corporate Strategy at PatSnap said that “organisations are under immense pressure to show a return for their investment in innovation. New inventions with the capacity to change the world are being patented constantly – but the likelihood of their inventors achieving this depends on their ability to identify and connect with those who need it most. PatSnap’s Licensee Locator will provide those looking to commercialise their IP with the data and analytics required to pinpoint those organisations, and explore many more licensing avenues.”

About PatSnap: PatSnap is the leading provider of research and development (R&D) analytics, for analysing trends, driving innovation, market planning, competitor intelligence and maximising return on IP assets. Founded in 2007, PatSnap is used by R&D, business and IP professionals in thousands of commercial and not-for-profit organisations globally, including NASA, the Department of Defense, China Mobile, Goodyear and Vodafone. It has offices in the UK, USA, Singapore and China.