The Patent Board


Rank	Company	Change

1	Leviton Mfg Co Inc

2	Illinois Tool Works

3	Matsushita Electric Industrial

4	Rockwell Automation Inc

5	Sumitomo Electric Industries

6	Schneider SA

7	General Electric Co

8	3M Co

9	FCI

10	Eaton Corp

Compiled with data through 1/1/2008
The Patent Scorecard ranks corporate innovation using a series of metrics to determine patent quality, technological strength and breadth of impact. Learn more . . .

Technology Landscape Analysis
Understand your patent portfolios relationship, leverage, and potential.

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Portfolio Assessment
Create an actionable foundation to structure your licensing and commercialization efforts.

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M & A Due Diligence
Use our patent quality metrics to add clarity and an essential objective perspective to your deals.

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Where is the Innovation? Government Sponsorship vs the Private Sector

Today, Governments that want insight into both the macroeconomic and microeconomic aspects of technological competitiveness are one of the primary beneficiaries of Patent Analytics. Long gone are the days of the 1900s Laissez-Faire Governments where economic policy was entrusted to the invisible hand. Through massive economic hardship and a depression or two, governments, and the U.S. in particular, have learned to play an active role in determining economic policy. Active governmental monitoring of innovation began in the U.S. in the late 1960s with a government funded study called the Traces Study. The Traces Study pioneered the application of quantitative analysis to tracing innovation. Eventually, the analytic approaches defined in the Traces Study evolved into the National Science Foundation�s Biennial Science & Engineering Indicators reports, initiated in 1972. Presently, the Board of Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP), an advisory board to the National Academies, also utilizes Patent Analytics to evaluate governmental programs and funding in conjunction with traditional means of economic analysis, such as dissecting the labor and capital associated with technology-driven industries. Governmental funding is one of the many proactive roles a government takes in fostering innovation and it yields thousands of scientific discoveries, as well as vast amounts of intellectual property. However, with an average of 162,0001 U.S. utility patents issued per year, any economic analysis premised on patents must be performed in both an efficient and effective manner.