The LexisNexis PatentSight+ Summit recently took place in Wiesbaden, Germany, bringing together over 100 thought leaders from the intellectual property (IP) community across more than 20 countries and 80 companies.
The premier annual event facilitated an intercontinental exchange of insights, best practices, and emerging trends, shaping the IP industry.
Leading up to the summit, a delegation of 20 IP professionals from Japan had the opportunity to participate in business exchange meetings with European corporations, including BASF and SCHOTT AG.
LexisNexis also facilitated a meeting between The European Patent Documentation Group (PDG) and The IP Landscaping Association (IPLA) in Japan – two industry groups focused on elevating the strategic use of patent data for business objectives.
These meetings aimed to foster meaningful connections and create a collaborative environment where IP innovation could thrive.
The two-day summit started with a welcome reception, setting the stage for a day packed with insightful presentations from IP experts.
Thorsten Zank of BASF highlighted how combining artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence can elevate IP functions to move into a role that provides interpretations and conclusions to further support business decisions with real recommendations.
He showed how supervised machine learning can reduce the efforts of a Patent Asset Index-based benchmark analysis of an entire technology field from 12 years to just 30 days.
Thorsten Zank ended his lecture with a clear appeal: “Leverage the advances in digitalization and AI technology and elevate the profile of the information professional, but do NOT stop using your brain”.
Chris Harrison from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) shared findings from their report on mapping patent innovations to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. WIPO leveraged the LexisNexis patent-to-SDG mapping for the report.
The report finds that the share of patents related to the UN SDGs is increasing and that the highest share of those is related to SDG 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, but also SDG 13 Climate Action and SDG 7 Affordable and Green Energy show strong upward trends compared to most other SDGs.
To inform about what’s trending and what’s emerging, WIPO has mapped SDG-related patent families per SDG into an Innovation Maturity Matrix showing ‘Innovation intensity’ at the y-axis and ‘Relative recency’ at the x-axis.
Sakae Nakamura of Asahi Kasei Corporation, representing the strong presence of Japanese delegates, demonstrated how IP landscape analysis guides her company’s business strategies. She is a true authority in the Japanese IP community and a pioneer in IP intelligence.
Her department provides IP landscape analysis and insights that guide business portfolio transformation, identifies M&A candidates, recommends investment proposals and contributes to accelerating new business as well as confirming competitive advantages and developing new customers.
Taking the audience from the theoretical concept to practical application, she presented two case studies that showed how LexisNexis PatentSight+ is leveraged to identify M&A targets and collaboration partners.
Michael Adel from Lumus Ltdpresented a patent analytics approach to assess technology consolidation and fragmentation.
Using Discrete Pareto Analysis (DPA) to analyze the distribution of patent families among owners in different technology areas defined by IPC codes, this visual patent analytics approach renders technology consolidation, fragmentation, and trajectories over time assessable; telling true industry stories.
While the analysis presented had a macro-economic touch, it was intensively discussed among the conference participants how to adapt the concept on a business-related scale
The summit also featured Beat Weibel of Siemens, who emphasized the importance of patent quality over quantity.
As the initiator of the Industry Patent Quality Charter, Weibel pointed out that patent quality is understood differently and that pressure for efficiency and quick grants could influence quality. He said that only valid and enforceable patents fulfil their objective to stimulate innovation! “Quality counts, not quantity.”
Minoru Masujima of Resonac Corporation showcased their transformation and the central role of IP. In Resonac’s CXO structure, the IP department reports directly to the CTO. It was impressive to see the complexity of Resonac’s IP software ecosystem with LexisNexis PatentSight+ as a core patent analytics tool supporting more than 120 patent analyses last year.
Masujima-san informed the audience that “Co-Creation” is one of the core values, and to stimulate this approach, they decided in 2024 to give all employees access to LexisNexis PatentSight+ to support IP transparency.
Ruchika Mendiratta from Boston Consulting Group is a Knowledge Expert and team Manager for BCG’s Center for Innovation Analytics. This specialized advanced analytics unit is focused on detecting weak signals of emerging trends, disruptions and new/adjacent opportunities from large, forward-looking datasets to help clients shape their strategic agenda.
She presented how IP analytics is applied to define target markets and how to define entry paths and roadmaps for execution. Her key takeaways: While IP plays a strong role, results should always be correlated with qualitative insights and business context.
During the networking sessions, the most common talk track was the use of Large Language Models (LLMs), Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) more broadly across the patent and IP intelligence workflows.
Attendees praised the summit as a premier networking event, facilitating valuable knowledge exchange and inspiring discussions among IP professionals worldwide.
Day Two offered hands-on learning opportunities through the Innovation Analytics Academy, with workshops on patent searching, classification, valuation metrics, and identifying sustainable innovations.
Participants had the chance to sharpen their skills through intensive, collaborative sessions led by experts like Dr. Carsten Guderian, Dirk Caspary, Sebastian Muller-Borges, and William Mansfield.
Reflecting on the event, Chris Harrison stated, “The PatentSight+ Summit is rapidly becoming, in my opinion, the premier patent analytics annual gathering in Europe, and it was an honor to present our recent WIPO report.”
Chris Harrison, Patent Analytics Manager, World Intellectual Property Organization
“The premier patent analytics annual gathering in Europe”
Michael Adel, who co-authored a research paper on patent meta-landscapes, expressed, “The whole affair was run flawlessly, elevating us patent data junkies to rock star status.”
Ruchika Mendiratta of BCG added, “What a day it has been – so many incredible discussions, valuable insights and amazing people to meet around.”
“Being able to talk to so many people about patent analytics and data was so valuable. We all had some common ground to talk about” said Andrew Lee, a Strategic IP Counsel.
Jane List, a World Patent Information editorial advisory board member and previous editor-in-chief, commented, “Thank you, Marco Richter and the team at LexisNexis, for the PatentSight+ Summit! A great venue and an even better lineup of speakers sharing their experiences with introducing AI in all its guises into their IP intelligence workflows. Good also to have the opportunity for the other kind of IP (In Person) discussions.”
The LexisNexis PatentSight+ Summit continues to be a vital platform for the global IP community to shape the future of innovation through thought-provoking discussions, networking opportunities, and hands-on learning experiences.
Pre-register for next year’s event, using the adjacent form, and our team will contact you.
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].
