The patent portfolio value analysis: A new framework to leverage patent information for strategic technology planning

Patents and patent portfolios are valuable assets. Companies need a conceptual structure to assess the value of their patent portfolio. This paper develops a practical and reproducible framework that can support scholars and practitioners to leverage the value of patents and to extract all possible strategic information from patent portfolio. The patent assessment process aims at comparing and contrasting the management of patents to the company's technologic and innovative strategy. The framework employs determinants of patent value that are elicited from patent databases, such as claims, citations, and market coverage, and that are expressed in terms of judgments achieved by interviewing involved managers, such as strategic relevance and economic relevance. The paper examines the main methodological issues in assessing patent portfolio value then, it describes the characteristics of the framework; subsequently, it illustrates the implementation of the proposed framework into two companies which operate in the aerospace and defense sector. The two implementations show that the framework can be used for strategic planning and strategic technology management. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.