Patents are legal documents that grant exclusive rights to inventions, allowing the Patent Owners to prevent others from making, using, selling, or importing the invention without permission for a period of time. Patents typically protect inventions for 20 years after the initial Patent Application Filing Date.

Patents also provide clear details on inventions, including diagrams and images. These details provided in patents are useful in any given industry as they aid professionals in monitoring current innovation. Corporate and Financial professionals typically research patents to uncover the trends of innovation in markets over time - and now that’s even easier to accomplish via AlphaSense!

AlphaSense provides two critical value adds when it comes to searching across patents:

In AlphaSense, you'll be able to:

Patents are crucial for valuing companies during M&A transactions, IPOs, and investment advisory, as they indicate innovation potential and competitive advantage.

For example, in investment banking, evaluating a company's patent portfolio can significantly impact deal valuation by correlating patent strength and market exclusivity to stock price performance.

Patents can also be leveraged to drive strategic decisions, like identifying acquisition targets or partnership opportunities based on complementary patent portfolios, thus enhancing technological capabilities and market positioning.

A concrete example is a corporation assessing the patent portfolio of a potential acquisition target to ensure it aligns with its long-term innovation goals, thereby securing a competitive edge in the market.

Finally, identifying potential competitive threats and opportunities by monitoring the latest published patents and searching for thematic keyword hits over time helps businesses stay on top of potential future headwinds.