Use Patents As An Unfair

Way To Gather Competitive

& Technology Intelligence
CB INSIGHTS
PATENT ANALYTICS

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PATENT ANALYTICS

Using machine learning, Patent Analytics helps you understand

competitor product strategy and which emerging technology
is poised to break out next.

In March of 2018, Walmart launched Eden, an intelligent food system, to track

produce freshness. If you were watching Walmart’s patent activity, you would
not have been surprised. Seven months prior to Eden’s launch, Walmart filed
patents outlining a system that could track the freshness of produce from
farm to stores.

Per the patents, the system’s “three-dimensional scanning” would present

visuals of in-store items to online shoppers, creating what the patent calls a
“Fresh Online Experience.”

Using topic modeling as part of CB Insights Patent Analytics, we spotted

Walmart’s rapidly growing patent focus on supply chain management,
e-commerce, and retail, which became the backbone of its Eden offering. And
we did this 3 quarters early.

Patents are a leading indicator of competitor strategy and priorities — but the
volume, variety, and velocity of patents has made them historically unusable.

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To frame the challenge, just look at the graph below.

Since 2017, Walmart has filed for over 500 patents.Those patents contained
7,026 pages and 3,512,565 words.

War & Peace, The Odyssey, Lord of the Flies, and Romeo and Juliet combined
have 794,913 words. So reading all of Walmart’s patents is like reading all
4 books 4.5x each.

Good luck with that.

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PATENT ANALYTICS

Competitive intelligence: Walmart’s new 3D scanning tech

Sorting through all these patents is simply beyond human cognition.

The below screenshot of Walmart’s profile highlights the topics Walmart was
focused on from Q1’15 to Q1’16. We see 15 supply chain management patents.

2016

Fast forward to Q1’17 — Q1’18, and we see the number of supply chain
management patents had more than tripled.

2018

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PATENT ANALYTICS

Reading, analyzing, & visualizing patents is

a problem made for machine learning.

As we dug in further, we identified and wrote about one of Walmart’s patents,

which focused on a “Fresh Online Experience” (highlighted above) and later
turned into its Eden program. This highlights the power of patents. Patents
provide predictive insights into competitor strategy, as in the Walmart example,
and also into emerging technologies.

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Competitive intelligence: Walt Disney’s product priorities

Patent Analytics provides a direct view into where your competition’s best
and brightest are focused, giving you an early view into the strategies they’re
pursuing and products they’re building.

Take The Walt Disney Company’s patent portfolio.

Disney has had a strong focus on “virtual reality” and interest in “video
on- demand services” as early as 2013, per its patents.

The volume of “video on demand services” patents, as well as patents focused

on virtual reality and 3D imaging, has grown since then. This begs the question:
what is Disney building, or planning on rolling out?

Earlier in 2018, Disney announced a much anticipated on-demand video

streaming service that will launch in 2019 as the company looks to better
compete with Netflix, Amazon, and others.

And within the last two years, Disney has unveiled multiple virtual reality
and 3D attractions — most recently Avatar, Flight of Passage, at its Animal
Kingdom park in Florida.

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Using CB Insights Patent Analytics, we’re able to see where companies are going
next, uncovering key competitive intelligence years in advance.

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Technology intelligence: CRISPR breaking out

Patents are also a great leading indicator of emerging technology areas that are
gaining momentum (or those which may be cooling).

Below, we used CBI Patent Analytics to compare the gene editing technology
CRISPR vs. Car-T immunotherapy.

As the graph illustrates, there are points in time with heavy patent activity, like the
spike of both CRISPR-focused patents and players in Q2’16.

Patent Analytics highlights the number of patent players in an area (aka how many
organizations are filing patents in a particular space). Analyzing both the volume of
patents and the number of players is key to determining what emerging technologies
are seeing traction.

An increasing number of players entering a domain is a leading indicator of

a technology on the cusp of breaking out.

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Market intelligence: identifying autonomous vehicle-related topics

In addition to competitive intelligence, you can also leverage patents to understand

what topics are associated with a particular technology.

For example, let’s look at the autonomous vehicle space, which has grown
dramatically over the past decade — from the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 to
every major automaker and tech giant having an AV playbook.

Below, you can see the top players in the space, revealing competitive intensity, as
well as see which competitors might have IP limiting your ability to launch products
or grab substantial market share.

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PATENT ANALYTICS

Using our machine learning-powered topic modeling, you can also quickly identify
related patent topics, which highlight key concepts and potential products that
you should be aware of. The ability to see adjacent topics can highlight additional
product areas as well as adjacent technology fields you may wish to explore.

Here are the top topics related to autonomous vehicles.

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Network intelligence: identify partners or acquisition targets

You can now see a company’s financing and M&A history alongside its patent
portfolio all in one place.

This enables you to simplify your due diligence when evaluating potential
partners or acquisition targets.

LiDAR, for example, is a key technology for autonomous vehicles, helping vehicles
see the road and other surroundings.

By simply typing LiDAR into CB Insights Patent Analytics, you’re able to instantly
identify key IP holders and potential targets.

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Luminar Technologies seems to be competing with much larger incumbents for

LiDAR IP. If you go to its company profile, you quickly get a more holistic view into
the company’s health and potential.

A company’s profile on CB Insights shows you not just its IP but other financial
and non-financial signals that are indicative of whether it might be a good partner
or acquisition target. This includes its Mosaic score, financing history, competitors,
and any related research by our Intelligence Analysts.

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WHERE IS ALL THIS DATA FROM?

The CB Insights platform

helps you see tomorrow’s
opportunities, today.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

If you are a CB Insights client but don’t

have access to patents but would like
to gain access, contact your dedicated
customer success manager.

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