Study Finds 55% of Intellectual Property Leaders Consider Navigating Budget Restrictions Their Top Priority for the Year

KPMG Law and LexisNexis release report summarizing findings from a joint study into the everyday challenges and best practices of global IP departments.

New York, NY, July 7th, 2021— KPMG Law and LexisNexis® Legal & Professional announce the release of a report discussing the everyday challenges and best practices of IP departments around the world. KPMG Law conducted this study with a broad sample of corporate IP departments across industries worldwide. In its past editions, this report only included statistics about the operational aspects of these companies, but in this 2020/21 report, using the award-winning patent analytics tool LexisNexis® PatentSight®, researchers at KPMG Law compared these operational performance aspects and the respective company’s patent portfolio, based on proprietary PatentSight® patent quality metrics.

The report’s findings are granular operational information about the operations of global IP departments such as the number of full-time employees, the amount and type of work that gets outsourced to agencies, the costs of IP work and much more.
Here are a few of these insights.

• Handling cost and budget restrictions and improving cooperation with internal clients are the top priorities for IP departments around the world.
• 38% of respondents expect a 0 – 10% decrease in their budgets in 2020/21.
• 34% of all participants evaluate and document the service quality of all law firms they cooperate with for future engagements, while 29% do so from time to time.

In its fifth year, this report by KPMG Law titled “Protecting Value: The 5th Intellectual Property Report 2020/21,” studied leading innovators from across industries. In order to guarantee the relevance and accuracy of the report, the underlying survey has been developed in cooperation with an advisory board of IP-experts from well-known international companies, such as Daimler, BASF, Thyssenkrupp, Infineon, Continental, Safran Group, Syngenta, and others.

Insights from this report can help IP department heads and managers anticipate future challenges and adopt best-in-class measures taken by successful companies to overcome these challenges. Among other things, managers can use this report to:

• Update their existing benchmarks and ensure realistic goals are being set
• Create a road map for their teams to achieve these goals
• Reinforce corporate strategies and stay resilient to new challenge

“As the database is able to distinguish between internal and external operations, it offers a broad set of adapted quantitative and qualitative key performance indicators to adequately compare your department’s performance,” said Andreas Bong, Head of Legal Operations, KPMG Law.

“Being a partner of innovation leaders around the world, we are proud to see our esteemed clients taking part in such a thought leadership study. We would also like to thank KPMG Law for choosing us to collaborate on this insightful project. I look forward to seeing this partnership grow stronger and produce more such insightful studies in the years to come,” said Marco Richter, Global Head of Product at LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions.

The full report is available for download here.

About KPMG Law

KPMG Law is a law practice defined by dynamic growth, international orientation and multidisciplinary scope. Established in 2007, our network of more than 350 lawyers provides you with individual and demand-driven legal consulting services at 16 locations throughout Germany. We pay special attention to issues relating to Legal Tech. In this area we are able to use synergies in research and development arising from our cooperation with other KPMG member companies in Germany and worldwide for your benefit. Technology and the law are becoming increasingly intertwined—and we have been part of this process from its inception. KPMG Law sees itself as a modern law firm for the 21st century. Our goal is to support you in understanding complex interrelationships and in reaching appropriate, legally informed decisions on business and technology issues.

About LexisNexis® Legal & Professional

LexisNexis Legal & Professional is a leading global provider of legal, regulatory and business information and analytics that helps customers increase productivity, improve decision-making and outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 160 countries with 10,400 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.

About LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions

LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions brings clarity to innovation for businesses worldwide. We enable innovators to accomplish more by helping them make informed decisions, be more productive, comply with regulations and ultimately achieve a competitive advantage for their business. Our suite of workflow and analytics solutions (LexisNexis® IP DataDirect, LexisNexis PatentAdvisor®, LexisNexis PatentOptimizer®, LexisNexis® PatentSight® and LexisNexis TotalPatent One®) enables companies to be more efficient and effective at bringing meaningful innovations to our world. We are proud to directly support and serve these innovators in their endeavors to better humankind.