Download - The Archived Canadian Patent Competitive Intelligence (January 18, 2011)

Muchiu (Henry) Chang, PhD. Cantab.

[email protected]

January 18, 2011

Canadian Competitive Intelligence Database

Characteristics of Competition

• Innovation is the most important corporate competency [1]

• Intangible intellectual property right (IPR) is the core sustainable competitive advantage [2]

• Competition of high risk, high gain

• Encouraging innovation, identifying new idea, taking more calculated risks and continuous innovation are the keys for prosperity

© Muchiu (Henry) Chang 2010

Competition Risks

• IPR Infringement

• Killer applications – kill the competitors or ourselves?

• Are we reinventing the wheel?


CI - Information about Risks and Niches

• Who are the players, competitors and partners?

• What are their strength and weakness?

• Are they becoming stronger or weaker in a specific market sector?

• What are their intentions or their prospects?

• What are our market niches?

• What is our short/long term development goal?

• What are the strategy, the resources and the steps needed to achieve this goal?


Patent Mapping, IPR and CI

• Patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret are the four kinds of IPR

• Patent is an index for the achievements in innovation investment

• Patent is a market shield to prevent competitors from entering a specific market

• Patent mapping is a patent database mining method

• Obtain CI from patent mapping analysis for strategic development planning [3]


US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and Its Patent Database

• U.S. is a major patent market in the world

• USPTO patent database is the largest patent database in the world

• It is updated weekly

• US is the largest Canadian export partner in 2009, accounting for about 73% of Canadian exports [4]


Our CI database

• Synchronized with USPTO patent database to provide up-to-date information about Canada’s competitive advantage

• Included information of 2975 Canadian companies/organizations having US patents granted from Jan. 1, 2004 to Jan. 18, 2011

• Provided synergies and intelligence in strategic planning for economic development, immigration, new immigrant employment and human resource


Overall Picture© Muchiu (Henry) Chang 2010

• Ontario is the largest patent hosting province (56% of the new patents issued to Canadian entities in 2010)

• Montreal is the largest patent hosting city in Canada• Waterloo, dominated by Research in Motion (RIM), is

the largest innovation hub of Ontario, second to Montreal in Canada

• Halifax, Fredericton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary & Vancouver are the largest innovation hubs to Nova Scotia (NS), New Brunswick (NB), Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia (BC) respectively in 2010

• RIM keeps continuous growth in US patents holding for the last 10 years


Aspects of GTA potential 22 employers

• GTA includes City of Toronto, Region of Durham, Halton, Peel and York, unless specified otherwise

• The potential 22 employers are ranked by the number of US patents they hold

• IT, auto and material processing are the top three sectors in patent holding. as in Figure 4

• Toronto is strong in auto and medicine/bio• IT strength is mainly in Mississauga• Material processing is mainly in Caledon and Oakville

Figure 1, Patent Statistics by Hosting Cities


Figure 2, Annual Patent Statistics by Provinces


Figure 3, 2006-2011.1.18 Cumulative Patent Distribution by Sectors for the top 22 GTA Potential Employers

Source: our study


Figure 4, Annual Patent Statistics of Sectors of the top 22 GTA Potential Employers


Conclusion© Muchiu (Henry) Chang 2010

• Patent mapping analysis can disclose the real-time economic strength of an entity, such as a company, a city or a country

• At the present stage, we have identified the major Canadian players and their strength in the global market

• Our information is synchronized with USPTO patent database to provide the latest nationwide competitive intelligence weekly

• Our work can provide reference baseline for further sophisticated market surveys


• Solely ranking a company by the number of granted patents may not be enough

• The name list may not be thorough• Further investigation of the quality of the

patents will be needed to disclose the real niches and opportunities

• In addition to patent, there are IPR of copyright, trademark and trade secret

• More sophisticated research efforts will be needed to nurture new IPR

Remarks

References[1] “Integrated Change Management Approach in the Knowledge Economic Epoch”, Muchiu (Henry) Chang, “American Society of Engineering Management Summer 2010 issue of the Practice Periodical”, July 2010https://www.netforumondemand.com/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?Site=asem&WebCode=PRAPER[2] “Sun Tzu and sustainable competitive advantage”, Muchiu Chang,

Engineering Management Conference, 2004. Proceedings. 2004 IEEE

International, Oct. 2004

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1407095[3] “Quantum computation patent mapping - a strategic view for the information

technique of tomorrow”, Muchiu Chang, Proceedings of ICSSSM '05, 2005

International Conference on Services Systems and Services Management,

June 2005

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1500183

[4] "Imports, exports and trade balance of goods on a balance-of-payments basis,

by country or country grouping“, Statistics Canada

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/gblec02a.htm
