Find the patents with co-owners, co-applicants, or rights transferred to different owners. Pinpoint the patents that may encounter future enforcement limitations.
Summary
See how many patents are co-owned/co-applications and the top current assignees and main applicants in the portfolio.
Co-Ownerships and Co-Applicants
The chart shows the percentage of patents in the portfolio with two or more current assignees to indicate a co-ownership issue.
Definition of "Co-Owned"
A patent or application with two or more current assignees, not including those historically co-owned.
How the percentage (%) is calculated in the Co-Ownerships and Co-Applicants chart:
The formula is the same for Co-Applicants, except that the "Current Assignee" field is changed to "Assignee.”
Assignees and Inventors
View the the assignees (along with their ultimate parent companies) and inventors with the priority date of the patents with this chart.
- Select whether you want to view the chart by applications or families. When set as “Applications,” the X-axis is set as the application year by default. When set as “Families,” the X-axis is set as the earliest priority year.
- Select the data you want to display in this chart. Check the top inventors, applicants, or the ultimate parents of the portfolio.
- Examine the activity of each inventor or applicant by application date or the earliest priority date. Unusual patterns may reflect an inventor’s job-hopping activities. You can use Patent Search to further identify the inventor's applications.
- Click to switch between inventors, applicants, and ultimate parents viewed in this chart.
- Hover over a number to find all applicants/assignees (in their standardized names).
- Click to change the X-Axis by application year or by earliest priority year. (Only applicable for the ‘by application’ view.)
*Ultimate Parent: The parent company of the entire corporate group to which the applicant or the current assignee belongs.
Current Patent Owners
This chart identifies the current owners of the patents in the portfolio and whether the patents were filed by the patent owners or acquired from third parties.
This chart also shows the original assignees/applicants (and their ultimate parent companies) of patents with reassignment records (those acquired from 3rd parties).
Derivative acquisition:
patents acquired from parties other than the current assignee through patent transfer.
The patent applicant ≠ the patent’s current assignee.
Original filing:
patents filed and not transferred by their current owners.
The patent applicant = the patent’s current assignee. 
- Click on the dots on the bottom of the chart to select to view either Derivative Acquisitions, Original Filings, or both types in the chart.
- Click the different colored portions of the bar (“Derivative acquisitions” as an example here) to see the corresponding patent list, including information on the original assignees.
*Note: The sum of the patents from the original assignee chart may not equal the number of patents with derivative acquisitions if there are patents with multiple original assignees.
For more about Current Owner data, please see the Appendix page.