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BASF, Dow Announce Support For New Patent Asset Index

ChemicalProcessing.com
10/12/2009

BASF SE and The Dow Chemical Co. jointly announced their support for the Patent Asset Index, a new methodology that measures research and development effectiveness, innovation strength and how these factors lead to sustained competitive advantage. Findings based on 2008 results rank BASF first in the overall Patent Asset Index. Dow ranks first in a critical measurement of the Patent Asset Index – Competitive Impact.

The new Patent Asset Index, created by Professor Holger Ernst of the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, is a science-based metric that is said to overcome the key limitations of current patent analytics by offering a global perspective, more transparency and a more robust quality measurement for the assessment of patent portfolios. In The Patent Asset Index takes into account the total global patent portfolio of a company and is not restricted to a just a single country or a limited period of time.

“We now have an important indicator for the sustainability of innovative strength, especially with regard to technology and R&D oriented companies on a global level,” says Ernst.

The Patent Asset Index is comprised of several sub-components and measures the overall strength of a company’s patent portfolio. It is based on two factors: (1) “Portfolio Size” (the number of worldwide active patent families) and (2) “Competitive Impact,” which is the combination of Technology Relevance and Market Coverage. “Technology Relevance” measures the number of citations a patent receives in other patents, and “Market Coverage” measures the extent of patent protection in global markets. Thus, the Patent Asset Index offers a more detailed, accurate and robust perspective than current methodologies used to measure innovation strength.

For further information about method and results of the patent benchmarking based on the Patent Asset Index, visit: www.whu.edu/tim/pai.