The Dolcera Blog

The Tech world is buzzing in 2011. Apple, Android, and Patents seems to the most recurring themes conversations converge too. Apple is a great success story, and literally becoming the apple of everyone’s eye by becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world, consistently innovating and generating higher and higher revenues. They recently posted one of their best quarters ever.

Many see Apple’s rise as a challenger to the Open Innovation theories, and positing that in technology a closed system offers you much more strength and sustainable innovation coming up with products which have completely re-shaped markets.

Of course Apple had a visionary in the form of Steve Jobs, but technologies don’t just develop “magically” and systems don’t just fall into “amazing” perfect tandem on their own. So, we at Dolcera decided to look into what exactly are the sources of Apple’s innovation.

Apple being a very secretive company, it was hard to find a lot of inside information. But one of the best sources of “innovation” data is the legal document which one gets for innovating - a patents. We decided to look at the patents of Apple and get an idea of the true sources of Apple’s innovation.

In our opinion, the key sources of Apple’s innovation are :
1. Expenditure on research,
2. Acquisitions, and
3. Patent Deals
Apple definitely has a strong in-house research. But every time Steve Jobs wished to make one of his “visions” a reality, it often required Apple to go out and spot “sources” which can be acquired, or taken the technology from. Some prime examples are acquisition of Fingerworks which developed the Multi-Touch for iPhone, and technology licensing from LiquidMetal which gave Apple products their great aesthetics among many others.

We have tried to provide a basic story flow in the visual below.

We are also conducting web seminars to detail on the findings of our research, and how you too can do the same. For details contact us at - info@dolcera.com

 Author: Pramath Malik

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Broadcom plans to acquire chipmaker Netlogic Microsystem, a maker of networking equipment. At USD 50 per share, Broadcom has agreed to invest 3.7 Bn USD in the deal. This is the biggest acquisition by Broadcom hence has many scratching their heads to understand the motivations of Broadcom, and their future plans as Broadcom has agreed to pay a 57% premium over the closing price on September 9th, 69% premium over average trading price for last 20 days.

Strategically, CEO Scott McGregor stated that the deal will double Broadcom’s market in networking equipment, which takes a substantial 23% share of their sales.

Financially it seems to make sense, as Netlogic has higher gross margin (55%) than Broadcom (52%), and the deal is expected to increase EPS (earning per share) by 10 cents as claimed by Broadcom.

Netlogic is known for it’s processors which help transfer multimedia (video), and other data over the internet efficiently. With a surge in consumption of data due to smartphones, and requirements of these has been on a rise.

This in effect is thus one of the three biggest deals caused by “smartphone phenomenon” with the other two being
1. Nortel patent portfolio sale for 4.5 Bn USD
2. Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility for 12.5 Bn USD

The exorbitant price tags associated with all of these deals have shocked many. So while Nortel, and MMI had patents being the primary asset, we decided to dig into Netlogic’s patent portfolio.

Netlogic though not a giant portfolio like Nortel, has been slowly chugging about and innovating in the areas of :
1. Accessing, addressing or allocating withing memory systems or architectures
2. Associative or content-addressed stores
3. Transmission of digital information
4. Methods for processing data
5. Digital computing or data processing equipment for specific functions

These are closely related to the knowledge-based processors, multi-core embedded processors, and digital front-end processors which Netlogic will bring to Broadcom.

Some of the key patents of Netlogic too are in these areas. The 5 most cited documents of Netlogic are as following :
1. US6154384 - Ternary content addressable memory cell -  119 patent citations
2. US6237061 - Method for longest prefix matching in a content addressable memory - 117 patent citations
3. US6137707 - Method and apparatus for simultaneously performing a plurality of compare operations in content addressable memory device - 105 patent citations
4. US6317350 - Hierarchical depth cascading of content addressable memory devices - 64 patent citations
5. US6240485 - Method and apparatus for implementing a learn instruction in a depth cascaded content addressable memory system - 52 patent citations

Broadcom has 214 patent families in IPC classes G06F 12, and G11C 15. And it gains 106 patent families from Netlogic. These two are the key technology areas in which the patents of NetLogic fall.

But besides the intellectual assets, Broadcom is also gaining the employee, among whom will be prolific inventors :

Given the trend of increasing data consumption, the move makes perfect sense from Broadcom’s perspective. Wether 3.7 Bn USD is a fair price, only time will tell

Author: Pramath Malik

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While BP and the government are still floundering in dealing with the catastrophe, we think that a certain look at the patent landscape might guide Mr. Tony Hayword, CEO - BP with a promising business strategy for the future. More often than not, the business decisions involving the patent due diligence / strategic IP kind have had a desired effect on the final outcome.

In addition to the $20 Billion fund dedicated to oil spills, it would also be prudent to look at the intellectual property of companies with deep sea oil capping technology. The immediate steps could also dwelve into mapping its own patent portfolio for potential synergy.

The following graphs shows the top patents assignees companies holding relevant patents of interest to BP at this juncture to seek deep sea oil capping technologies and one of them could be a potential target for BP to acquire or to in-license.

Top IPC Classes with their definitions

Note: The above IP analysis is only a sample derived from the respective IPC classes and we have withheld the comprehensive data for data security purposes. Please contact us for more information while we will be glad to help you.

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SAN MATEO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dolcera Corporation, a leading information services and technology firm that helps companies quickly and effectively navigate through their entire innovation cycle to achieve successful business outcomes, today announced its new Patent Dashboard, available for the first time as a standalone platform.

Dolcera’s flagship software as a service (SaaS) Patent Dashboard is a proprietary Web 2.0-based collaborative tool that enables companies to visualize, search, and map the relevant competitive patent landscape, determine patent value, and ultimately accelerate the time to commercialize their patents. The new Patent Dashboard v1.1 provides greater flexibility and control as well as enhanced search and reporting capabilities.

Mapping the Patent Landscape

Today, patents are under greater scrutiny, take longer to be approved, and can cost several hundred thousands of dollars from application until grant stage. At the same time, patents represent new sources of revenue through commercialization or acquisition, and are also viewed as points of differentiation and competitive advantage.

The Patent Dashboard’s ease of use and flexibility, along with its collaboration capabilities, make it easy and practical for experts and non-experts to use. It may also be used alone or with other patent tools, such as those for search, intellectual asset management, or research.

Among the new features of the Dolcera Patent Dashboard Tool v1.1 are:

• Custom Taxonomies and Patent Additions by users on the fly, based on their topics of interest;
• Editable Patent Categories that can be easily moved within the Dashboard;
• Enhanced Researching and Reporting, with patent searches (even complex Boolean ones) and information filters; and
• Enhanced Collaboration via relevance rankings, referral tagging, track changes, and data security for selective user access.

The Dolcera Patent Dashboard is sold directly; a single full and functional user license starts from $49 per user per month.

About Dolcera

Dolcera is a leading information services and technology firm that helps companies quickly and effectively navigate through their entire innovation cycle to achieve successful business outcomes. The company’s mission is to deliver high-quality Intellectual Property (IP), technology, and market research services that can be deployed easily and quickly within a company or department. Dolcera’s products and services are used by Fortune 500 and Global 1000 organizations across a wide array of industries including alternative energy, biotechnology, chemicals, oil and gas, consumer goods, food and beverages, manufacturing, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, software and telecommunications. The company is privately held and based in San Mateo, Calif. and Hyderabad, India. For a demo of the Patent Dashboard, please see: YouTube Link.

For more information, please visit: www.dolcera.com

Dolcera and Dolcera Patent Dashboard are trademarks of Dolcera Corporation. All other products and services mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

Contacts

Creekside Communications
JoAnn Johnston, 650-322-6245
joann@creekside-communications.com
or
Dolcera Corporation
Manikandan B., 650-269-7952
manikandan.b@dolcera.com

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This is in continuation to my previous post on Patenting Landscape in India which could be read from the link given below
http://blogs.dolcera.com/blog/2009/07/18/patenting-landscape-in-india-a-view-on-patenting-trends-in-india-a-dolcera-analysis/

In this post the Analysis concentrates on finding the Top companies who have maximum publication in the Indian Patent Office. The Top Companies were searched for the patents published between 01st January 2005 -21st July 2009. The patents filed in all the 4 Indian Patent offices are considered

The Top 15 Companies

From the Graph one can conclude that Qualcomm leads in the race for Publications in the Indian Patent Office with 2118 publications followed by Philips Electronics and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Qualcomm deals with electronics and communication products. Since India is a major market for Mobile/ Cell phone, Qualcomm has a good advantage for its patents filed in India to get protection for its inventions

The Top Indian Assignees

From the Graph one can see that Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR) is the Top Indian Assignee when it comes to publications in India with 1541 publications followed by Hindustan Unilever Ltd. with 523 publications. But CSIR still trails with Qualcomm and hence it is necessary to encourage more research to be the Top patent filer in India.

Of the Top 100 Companies that Dolcera has analysed, 8 Indian companies happen to be in it while the rest of them are Foreign companies. It means 92 % of the Top publications in India are by MNCs. This scenario should be looked upon since the domestic Patent filers in other countries like the US, Japan, China are neck to neck with the International Filers. This should be seriously be looked upon by Indian Companies since it shows that most Indian companies concentrate/Invest only a small part of their budget to R&D activities. The Indian Government should also encourage Indian Universities to carry out R&D activities so that India could become a recognized country in R&D developments.

-Anil Sharma

Knowledge Scientist

Dolcera

© Dolcera 2009, All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication should be copied without the permission from the authour or from Dolcera.

Disclaimer:  There can be manual errors and the author or the company(Dolcera) takes no responsibility for the damage caused due to the data provided.

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The current issue of the Harvard Business Review has a fascinating study of patent sharks and their tactics. The authors make five recommendations to counter patent sharks. To that, I’d like to make a sixth: Use IP landscaping (samples on our wiki) to understand the key players and key inventions before jumping into a new field.