Charts

c c harts in the overview tab harts in the overview tab the overview tab contains 5 chart categories to help you analyze your dataset by default, only 4 charts are shown if you wish to see the other charts, you must select them in 'select charts' click 'select charts' to open the selection menu you can either select all charts in a category by ticking the chart category as a whole, or you can select individual charts once you have applied your selection, click the select button to generate the charts by default, the year range for all charts is the past 25 years you can create custom year ranges as well you can also reset your date range with the 'reset' button all charts all charts technology improvement rate cycle time knowledge flow overall patent trend, per status overall patent trend technology maturity tir forecast organization size organization size organization size trends organization maturity organization & filing geography organization size per geography filing geography geographical distribution geographical size geographical size trends geographical maturity country of origin country of origin distribution overall patent trend, per country of origin improvement rate cycle time knowledge flow tracking technology technology maturity tracking organization size organization size new organization size tracking organization & filing geography organization size per geography tracking filing geography geographical distribution geographical size new geographies size each chart has buttons located in the upper right corner with these buttons, you can modify the size of the chart, export the chart data in various formats (such as json, xls, csv, png, or pdf) to quickly gain insights from the charts, click the blue chat button located in the upper right corner odin automatically generates descriptions for charts and analyzes data to help you understand the key insights please note that all charts are subject to the filters you set each time you update your filters, all charts will be updated accordingly technology charts technology charts for some charts in the technology category , you have the option to choose how the data should be displayed you can choose between "average," which shows the average values based on all patents that have been published up to that year, or "year by year," which shows the values only for patents that were published in that year improvement rate improvement rate the improvement rate chart shows how rapidly a technology area is improving every area of technology is trying to optimize its performance and cost over time it turns out that the rate at which this happens can be predicted with metrics from patent data the improvement rate is the percentage of extra performance per dollar that can be expected from this area of technology every year this metric was devised together with mit and numerous papers have been written on the subject (ask us if you are interested!) the easiest way to think of the improvement rate is as interest on a bank account if you have a really high interest rate on your bank account, your money balance will increase tremendously fast improvement rates work exactly the same technologies with a high improvement rate improve rapidly, as that percentage or performance per dollar is added each year a technology's improvement rate metric can be estimated based on the cycle time and knowledge flow metrics cycle time measures how quickly a technology area produces new generations of itself, and knowledge flow measures how much of a step forward those new generations represent a technology with a short cycle time and high knowledge flow will have a high improvement rate and vice versa in and of itself, a certain improvement rate percentage does not say whether a technology will be successful or not we can only compare a technology's improvement rate to those of competing technologies to see whether a given improvement rate is comparatively high or low the fastest improving technology out of a set of competing technologies typically becomes the dominant solution, but in order to determine whether a given improvement rate is high or low, we have to compare it to other competing technologies cycle time cycle time the cycle time chart shows how quickly a technology area produces new generations of itself technically, we measure the 'median age of backward citations' for all patent families in your dataset published in a certain year if you think about what a patent is from a high level, you will see that each patent contains the same structure first you describe what your invention is, then you explain which prior inventions you are improving over, then you argue for why yours is better, and finally you provide a long description of exactly how it works your patent has a date, and so do the inventions that you are improving over since all patents have dates and the related prior inventions are cited, we can calculate the median distance in years between your invention and those you are improving over if you scale this up to all inventions belonging to an area of technology for each publication year, you get the median number of years it took to come up with the next iteration of technology it turns our that this number strongly correlates with how rapidly technologies improve technologies with short cycle times, e g that take quick steps/iterate fast, improve rapidly, and vice versa just as with the improvement rate, a certain cycle time cannot be determined to be high or low in isolation, we must always compare it to competing technological alternatives knowledge flow knowledge flow the knowledge flow chart shows how impactful inventions from a certain period are technically speaking, we measure the average number of times a patent family in your dataset gets cited by later inventions within the first 3 years of publication generally speaking, important inventions are immediately important and get cited much more than inventions that are not important therefore, we can use citation numbers as an indication of how important or influential inventions have been knowledge flow also strongly correlates with how rapidly technologies improve technology areas that get cited a lot generally improve faster, as a citation is an indication that the knowledge that has been created is useful enough to develop upon whereas cycle time measures how quickly technology areas take steps forward, knowledge flow measures how large the step was technologies that take quick big steps forward improve rapidly and vice versa just as with cycle time and the improvement rate, a certain knowledge flow value cannot be determined to be high or low in isolation, we must always compare it to competing technological alternatives overall patent trend, per status overall patent trend, per status this chart shows all published patent families in your dataset, and breaks them down by status and publication year there are 4 statuses that can be shown for patent families in force in force at least 1 member has been granted and is currently enforceable pending pending all members are still in the application phase inactive inactive all members have lapsed unknown unknown we have insufficiently reliable data from the patent office to assign a status technology areas that are emerging will show an upward overall patenting trend emerging technology areas will consist mostly out of pending and in force patent families overall patent trend overall patent trend this chart shows the number of published patent families in your dataset over time it provides a clear overview of how the volume of published patent families has changed, helping you spot trends and patterns in patent activity technology maturity technology maturity this chart shows all published patent families in your dataset, and breaks them down by status it gives an idea of the overall maturity of the technology field you are analyzing mature or declining technologies will have lots of inactive patents, as in many cases the inventions will have already lapsed, and emerging or immature technologies will lean more towards pending and in force patent families tir forecast tir forecast shows how quickly the technology in question will double, triple, etc its performance per dollar if you know how a technology performs today, and at what cost you can use the tir forecast chart to find out when a technology will supersede another in the tir forecast chart, you can set starting cost and performance figures and add other technologies to the chart once you have added all technologies, their improvement rates, and their starting performance and cost figures, you can create a forecast of when technology a will disrupt technology b in settings, you can enter performance and cost targets for your technology area in 'technology' you can also set the current performance and cost of competing technology areas under 'segments' the percentage shown next to the 'technology' settings is the last known improvement rate from the improvement rate chart this chart is very useful for forecasting but extremely sensitive to which values you put in garbage in = garbage out if you want to use this chart for decision making, you have to make sure that the current performance and cost figures you are putting in are reliable if you only have a hunch, putting in multiple scenario's with error margins might be useful in the below example, the solid blue line represents the incumbent technology which is improving at a 19 7% rate the disruptive technology, labeled segment 1, has a much higher improvement rate of 50% but starts much lower because it is still emerging and has a much higher cost for the same performance (typical of emerging technologies) with these starting performance and cost figures, given the higher improvement rate of the emerging technology, it will likely outperform the incumbent technology by 2031 you can also add multiple technologies at once if you need help with setting starting cost and performance criteria feel free to get in touch with our research team organization charts organization charts these charts give insight into the organizations that are active in your technology area for organization charts, it is possible to select up to 25 top organizations based on the cumulative number of patent families per organization families, per organization families, per organization this chart shows you the top patenting organizations in your dataset it gives insight into which organizations are most aggresively pursuing innovation in this area we count the total number of patent families associated with this organization in your dataset and order them from most to least patenting organizations overall patent trend, per organization overall patent trend, per organization this chart shows you the cumulative number of patent families, per organization, in a certain publication year it gives insight into which organizations are most aggressively pursuing innovation in this technology area over the years families, per organization and status families, per organization and status this chart shows you the top patenting organizations in your dataset but segments their portfolio by family status there are 4 statuses that can be shown for patent families in force in force at least 1 member has been granted and is currently enforceable pending pending all members are still in the application phase inactive inactive all members have lapsed unknown unknown we have insufficiently reliable data from the patent office to assign a status generally speaking, organizations that are actively pursuing innovation in a technology area will have a significant amount of pending or in force patent families if the vast majority of an organization's patent families are inactive, they likely have decreased interest in the technology area organization & filing geography charts organization & filing geography charts these charts give insight into where in the world organizations in your dataset are focusing their patenting efforts each chart can be displayed by country or continent and show the top 'x' patent family (from the top 5 up to the top 25) holding countries/continents in your dataset organization size per geography organization size per geography this chart shows the top patenting organizations in your dataset and breaks down their portfolio by country or by continent it gives insight into where the organizations in your dataset are focusing their patenting efforts geographically patents only provide protection in the country they are held in in other words, if your competitor only holds japanese patents and you operate in the united states, there may not be a problem geography charts geography charts these charts give insight into where in the world patent families are being filed and held in your dataset geographical distribution geographical distribution the families per geography map shows the top patenting countries or continents in your dataset and displays it as a heatmap it gives insight into where in the world innovation in your technology area is being pursued geographical size geographical size the families per geography pie chart shows the top patenting countries or continents in your dataset and displays it as a pie chart it gives insight into where in the world innovation in your technology area is being pursued geographical size trends geographical size trends this chart shows the total number of patent families per publication year segmented per filing geography (country or continent) it gives insight into where in the world patents in your technology area are being filed over time geographical maturity geographical maturity this chart shows the top patenting countries or continents in your dataset and breaks the total portfolios down by patent status there are 4 statuses that can be shown for patent families in force in force at least 1 member has been granted and is currently enforceable inactive inactive all members have lapsed pending pending all members are still in the application phase unknown unknown we have insufficiently reliable data from the patent office to assign a status it gives insight into where in the world innovation in your technology area is being pursued and breaks the numbers down by status c c ountry of origin the country of origin charts break down patent data based on the headquarters location of the patent holding company this allows you to see not just how a technology is evolving overall, but also which countries are home to the companies driving these changes importantly, these charts are based on the country where the company is headquartered, not where the patents were filed or registered families, per country of origin families, per country of origin this chart shows the distribution of patent families across different countries of origin each bar or slice represents the number of patent families owned by companies headquartered in that country you can use this chart to understand which countries are home to the most active companies in this technology area if a particular country dominates the chart, it means that companies headquartered there are investing heavily in this space conversely, a more even distribution suggests that innovation is spread across multiple countries this information helps you answer questions like where are the main centers of innovation located? which countries have companies most committed to developing this technology area? overall patent trend, per country of origin overall patent trend, per country of origin this chart shows the total number of patent families per publication year segmented by country of origin (where the headquarters of the patent holding company is based) it gives insight into which countries are home to the companies that publish patents in this technology area over time, independent of the specific offices or countries where the patents were filed improvement rate improvement rate this chart shows the average yearly improvement rate segmented by country of origin the improvement rate reflects how quickly a technology improves in terms of performance per cost, and is based on the cycle time (speed of iteration) and knowledge flow (impact of those iterations) you can use this chart to compare the relative innovation speed of companies headquartered in different countries countries with shorter cycle times and higher knowledge flows will generally show higher improvement rates however, interpretation requires caution if a country has very few patent families in the dataset, its improvement rate may appear artificially high or low due to outliers while the overall improvement rate for a technology area is more reliable, this view provides valuable insight into which countries host companies pushing the frontier most effectively cycle time cycle time this chart shows the average cycle time segmented by country of origin cycle time measures how quickly new generations of a technology appear, with shorter times indicating faster iteration you can use this chart to see which countries have companies that innovate rapidly versus those that move more slowly faster cycle times suggest a culture of quick iteration and continuous improvement, while longer cycle times may indicate slower development processes as with the other charts, it’s important to compare across countries rather than interpret values in isolation the meaningful insight comes from understanding which countries’ companies are iterating more quickly relative to others knowledge flow knowledge flow this chart shows the average knowledge flow segmented by country of origin knowledge flow reflects how impactful new inventions are, measured by how often they are cited by later inventions in the first three years after publication you can use this chart to identify which countries’ companies are producing the most influential inventions higher knowledge flow means companies headquartered in that country are generating ideas that others are quickly building upon this metric helps you understand not just how much innovation is happening in a country, but how significant those innovations are in shaping the future of the technology area t t racking charts racking charts tracking charts show you how tracked values have changed over the selected time period select the time period you would like to visualize and the charts update automatically technology maturity technology maturity this chart shows the difference in counts of pending, in force, inactive, and unknown status patent families for your selected period new new f amilies, per organization amilies, per organization this chart shows the top patent publishing organizations in this dataset over your selected period rank ordered from most patent families published to least new entrants new entrants this chart shows which organizations appear in your dataset for the first time during your selected period and displays how many patent families were published serves as an easy way to spot organizations that are innovating their way into a new technology area families per filing geography per organization families per filing geography per organization this chart shows the top patent holding organizations in your dataset and breaks down their portfolio by country (or by continent) over your selected period it gives insight into where the organizations in your dataset are focusing their patenting efforts geographically families per filing geography map families per filing geography map this chart shows in which countries or continents new patent families are being published over the selected period and displays it as a heatmap it gives insight into where in the world innovation in your dataset is occurring over the selected period families per filing geography bar chart families per filing geography bar chart this chart shows in which countries or continents new patent families are being published over the selected period and displays it as a bar chart it gives insight into where in the world innovation in your technology area is being pursued over the selected period new entrants geographies new entrants geographies this chart shows which countries or continents are seeing patenting activity for the first time