Medical Wearables Competitive Landscape and Technological Strategy Assessment Using Intellectual Property Research

James H. Moeller - Moeller Ventures LLC - https://www.moellerventures.com/
Date: 2020-07-16

Overview & Key Take-Aways:

  • The following is a presentation given at the 2020 University of Minnesota, Design of Medical Devices Conference, in the Wearable Medical Technology topic section. The full Wearable Medical Technology session can be accessed and replayed at the following link, and this intellectual property presentation starts at 38 minutes into the video. http://www.dmd.umn.edu/2020/Wearables1.html
  • For this intellectual property analysis, I’ve utilized Google’s BigQuery data warehouse service and the patent datasets that are provided through BigQuery. BigQuery and the patent datasets truly enable a very automated type of analysis that can be integrated into modern data science platforms, such as what I’ve applied here using Python programmatic analysis in Jupyter notebooks.
  • The ability to leverage data science to automate the landscaping and analysis process can’t be understated. These techniques allow for the quick and recursive execution of this analysis, which is a key enabler to incorporate this information into ongoing strategic business decision making.
  • For this presentation I’ve used three techniques to create different domain collections: 1) keywords and phrases, 2) a company name list, and 3) the Google derived similars (i.e. similar patent documents identified via Google’s machine learning process using a wide variety of patent document features). See the links below for the domain collections landscape reports.
  • All reports are dynamic, dashboard-like, HTML-enabled reports with searchable tables, mouse-over, active charts, and hyperlinked patent references to additional information. This dynamic report design is key in the ability of the user to explore and digest the landscaping results.
  • The Patent Application Filing Timeline diagram provides a visual indication as to how the intellectual property has evolved with the market. The vast majority of the patent application filings for the medical device wearables market have occurred within the last six years since the beginning of 2014, reflecting the relatively near-term emergence of the market.
  • The Top Assignee table shows the competitive landscape as it pertains to the companies filing patents. The top three assignees consisting of Zoll Medical, Cardiac Pacemakers (a division of Boston Scientific Corporation), and Valencell make up almost 23% of the top 250 assignees.
  • The Top Inventors table identifies the most prolific patent-filing inventors listed on the patent applications contained in the domain collection and essentially identifies the top intellectual property experts of the medical device wearables sector. This table also lists the entities (corporations, educational institutions, etc.) to which those inventors have assigned the predominant number of patent applications, and thus identifies relationships between inventors and those assignees.
  • The Top Patent Literature Citations table identifies the most cited patent document references across the domain collection and is designed to identify the most significant patent documents to the domain area profiled. In the full reports, the citations are also tabulated on an assignee basis to determine the assignees / companies with the most cited portfolios of patent documents. Overall, Medtronic holds the most significant portfolio of cited patent documents. Corventis, Inc. (now part of Medtronic) in indicated as having the most significant portfolio of cited patent documents for the keyword/key phrase and company list domain collections. Medtronic is indicated as having the most significant portfolio of cited patents for the Google similars domain collection.
  • The Top Inventive CPC Group Codes table shows the CPC group codes (and the group code titles) that are assigned to patent applications across the domain collection and thus provides a ranking of the macro-level technology topics that are utilized in medical device wearables. In general, group code A61B (Diagnosis; Surgery; Identification), G16H (Healthcare Informatics), and G06F (Electric Digital Data Processing) are the top three technology classifications for the medical device wearables domain collections.
  • The Top Inventive CPC Group Code Timeline Heat Map diagram is designed to provide visibility into the technology trends represented by the most used CPC codes in the domain collection. In particular, we see that the A61B CPC code (Diagnosis; Surgery; Identification) is the most popular technology category into which inventions are categorized for the medical device wearables domain collection. But in addition, during the peak patent filing period of Q3 2016 we also see notable increased concentrations of filings in G16H (Healthcare Informatics), A61M (Devices for introducing media into or onto the body), and G02B (Optical elements, systems, or apparatus). These concentration hotspots indicate new applications of these technologies to medical device wearables and show the notable increases in patent application filings to protect these technologies.

 Slide1

Disclaimer:

  • Don’t interpret anything in this presentation as legal advice or as a substitute for consultation with legal advisors.

 

Slide2

Presentation Overview:

  • Slides 1 and 2 cover the landscaping process and describe the three domain collections that have been created for this presentation.
  • Slides 3 through 8 summarize key results, from the landscaping process of the three domain collections, that exemplify the strategic competitive and technological information that can be derived.
  • These results include a patent application filing timeline, tabulations of top assignees and inventors, an analysis of patent literature citations, and an examination of CPC technology classification codes.
  • Slide 9 lists additional options for landscaping analysis that can be utilized in strategic business decision making.

 

Slide3

Intellectual Property Landscapeing Process:

  • This presentation will show how IP research can be utilized to provide insights into competitive landscape and technology strategy.
  • In particular, for this analysis, I’m going to be using patent landscaping techniques and patent analytics to tabulate the summary information pertaining to intelligently created domain collections that are designed to profile the medical wearables sector.
  • For this analysis, I’ve utilized Google’s BigQuery data warehouse service and the patent datasets that are provided through BigQuery. The patent datasets in BigQuery are provided by IFI Claims.  BigQuery and the patent datasets truly enable a very automated type of analysis that can be integrated into modern data science platforms, such as what I’ve applied here using Python programmatic analysis in Jupyter notebooks.
  • The diagram shows the general process I’ve used, where I start by defining and creating the domain collection of patent documents to analyze.  I’ll then break-out information associated with those patent documents, according to assignees (competitive landscape), inventors (key tech experts), citations (notable patents and prior art), and technology class codes (technology analysis).
  • The ability to leverage data science to automate the landscaping and analysis process can’t be understated. These techniques allow for the quick and recursive execution of this analysis which is a key enabler to incorporate this information into ongoing strategic business decision making.

 

Slide4

Domain Collections for Medical Device Wearables:

 

Slide5

Patent Application Filing Timeline:

  • The patent application filing timeline provides a visual indication as to how the intellectual property has evolved with the market.
  • In particular, this shows the number of patent applications that have been filed on a quarterly basis that match our domain collection criteria.
  • This filing timeline pertains to the domain collection created via the keyword / phrase technique; “wearable health”, “wearable medical”.
  • The vast majority of the patent application filings have occurred within the last six years since the beginning of 2014, reflecting the relatively near-term emergence of the medical device wearables market.

 

Slide6

Top Assignees:

  • Top assignee list shows the competitive landscape as it pertains to the companies filing patents.
  • This list is again from the keywords and phrases medical device wearables domain collection analysis.
  • The “Total Num of Patent Apps per Assignee” column indicates the total number of applications that have been assigned to the indicated assignee.
  • The “Percent of Top 250 Assignees” column indicates the percentage of assignments of the indicated assignee across the top 250 assignees.
  • This list can vary notably based on the technique used to create the domain collection.
  • The top three assignees consisting of Zoll Medical, Cardiac Pacemakers (a division of Boston Scientific Corporation), and Valencell make up almost 23% of the top 250 patent document assignees.

 

Slide7

Top Inventors:

  • This table identifies the most prolific patent-filing inventors listed on the patent applications contained in the domain collection and essentially identifies the top intellectual property experts of the medical device wearables sector. This table also lists the entities (corporations, educational institutions, etc.) to which those inventors have assigned the predominant number of patent applications, and thus identifies relationships between inventors and those assignees.
  • The “Total Num of Patent Apps” column indicates the total number of patent applications on which the individual is listed as an inventor. The default sorting of the table is on this column in descending order.
  • The “Num of Patent Apps per Assignee” column indicates the number of patent applications, on which the individual is listed as an inventor, that have been assigned to the indicated assignee.
  • This list is again from the keywords and phrases domain collection analysis.

 

Slide8

Top Patent Literature Citations:

  • This table identifies the most cited patent document references across the domain collection and is designed to identify the most significant patent documents to the domain area profiled.
  • This table can provide insight into key inventions in a domain collection and a starting point for prior art analysis.
  • This table show the top 10 citations from the “similars” domain collection for the medical device wearables sector.
  • In the full report citations are also tabulated on an assignee basis to determine the assignees / companies with the most cited portfolios of patent documents.
  • Overall, Medtronic holds the most significant portfolio of cited patent documents. Corventis, Inc. (now part of Medtronic) in indicated as having the most significant portfolio of cited patent documents for the keyword/key phrase and company list domain collections. Medtronic is indicated as having the most significant portfolio of cited patents for the Google similars domain collection.

 

Slide9

Top Inventive CPC Group Codes:

  • This is a table of the top inventive CPC group codes (and the group code titles) that are assigned to patent applications across the domain collection and thus provides a ranking of the macro-level technology topics that are utilized in the domain area profiled.
  • In general, group code A61B (Diagnosis; Surgery; Identification), G16H (Healthcare Informatics), and G06F (Electric Digital Data Processing) are the top three technology classifications for the medical device wearables domain collections.
  • CPC codes are assigned to every patent application to categorize the inventive ideas embodied the application. The CPC code consists of at least 7 characters and digits as defined by the Cooperative Patent Classification code system. The first four characters and digits are referred to as the CPC group code, which can be interpreted as a macro-level classification of the inventive ideas. The titles of the group codes thus provide a macro-level description of the embodied technology.
  • The “Percent of Top 250 Codes” column indicates the concentration of the inventive ideas in the designated group code across the top 250 group codes in the domain collection. Patent applications can be assigned multiple CPC codes representing potentially different inventive ideas embodied in the application.
  • This table is from the “similars” medical device wearables domain collection.

 

Slide10

Top Inventive CPC Group Code Timeline Heat Map:

  • This shows a timeline heatmap of the number of patent applications that utilize the top inventive CPC codes as filed on a quarterly basis spanning the domain collection application filing timeline. This heatmap is designed to provide visibility into the technology trends represented by the most used CPC codes in the domain collection.
  • This heatmap shows the top 10 inventive CPC codes for the company list derived domain collection of medical device wearables.
  • In particular, we see that the A61B CPC code (Diagnosis; Surgery; Identification) is the most popular technology category into which inventions are categorized for this medical device wearables domain collection.
  • But in addition, during the peak patent filing period of Q3 2016 we also see notable increased concentrations of filings in G16H (Healthcare Informatics), A61M (Devices for introducing media into or onto the body), and G02B (Optical elements, systems, or apparatus). These concentration hotspots indicate new applications of these technologies to medical device wearables and show the notable increases in patent application filings to protect these technologies.

 

Slide11

What Else is Possible:

  • Similar patent landscaping techniques can be applied in other ways.
  • Focusing on specific companies, a set of companies (i.e. competitors), more detailed market focus, more detailed technology focus maybe structured as a white-space search, or maybe focused on just patented technology and structured as a freedom-to-operate analysis.

 

Slide12

About Jim Moeller:

  • Moeller Ventures LLC: https://www.moellerventures.com
  • I run my own consulting business focused on business intelligence for strategic decision making, including competitive intelligence and intellectual property research covering domains such as medical devices, IoT, wireless and wireline communications, and electronics systems.
  • I’m also a registered patent agent but focus on the research and strategic intelligence aspects of intellectual property, as opposed to the filing and prosecution of patents at the USPTO.
  • Feel free to contact me if I can be of service in your strategic business decision making.

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