Category Archives: charts

After a rebound from the previous year, SaaS companies had a successful 2019, paving the way for other IPOs in that category. Vital to VCs’ portfolio, public SaaS companies also have amassed considerable patent portfolios. Searching Crunchbase’s company categories in combination with IPqwery patent data, we are able to take a closer look at overall filing trends. Using IPqwery mapping, all acquisitions and subsidiaries are accounted for to get the full account of all relevant patent statistics.

Given their history, it is no surprise that Citrix, ServiceNow, and Akamai lead in terms of total patents. Both show no signs of slowing down with a combined 42 published patents in 2020 alone. In addition, the volume of patent publications continues to rise since 2015 for most companies on the list, indicating no slowdown in filings. The “Pending to Total Patent” ratio (shown in the last column) can be used to highlight and to gauge the amount of recent innovation being conducted for each company. The higher ratio means more recent patents filed compared to their overall patent holdings.

Using IPqwery on the Crunchbase Marketplace users can dive deeper by viewing the top technologies used by each company, as well as the number of patents pre and post IPO. In addition, lists can be exported to include a company’s full patent portfolio including Title, Abstract, Patent Class, and more. In a similar fashion, trademark filing data can be added to help provide insights into current and future brands in the marketplace and pipeline.

Here’s a quick view of the increase over the past few years in the use of cryptocurrency terms found within the goods and services descriptions of US trademark filings.

Specifically, we searched for the use of terms such as Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. As can be seen, there has been a significant uptick in filings, especially in the third quarter of 2017. Note that Q4-2017 data is not included.

Some of the top filers include: GENIUSES AT WORK CORPORATION, BLOCKCHAIN GOC, R-STOR INC., VIDROLL LLC, RIVETZ CORP. , CENTRA TECH, INC., and TATS LABS, LLC.

Below are tracks of the frequency of the terms Bitcoin and Blockchain, as from Google Trends.

In a head to head comparison, IPqwery presents the IP holdings of Twitter and Snapchat. True, may not be a comparison of equals, but an interesting one nonetheless.

Note: Aggregating this data is not trivial.  There are many data manipulations required to accurately compile the IP profile for any company. This includes normalizing company names, verifying subsidiary companies and grouping related entities, and even match inventors with their respective companies.

To investigate how this works in more detail, check out the IPqwery Chrome extension for Crunchbase and test it out yourself.

Scroll at right below to see the entire infographic

Download (PDF, 154KB)

IPqwery? has produced a nice overview of the intellectual property held by companies within Crunchbase’s Unicorn Leaderboard.

Note: Aggregating this data is not trivial.  There are many data manipulations required to accurately compile the IP profile for any company, Unicorn or otherwise. This includes normalizing company names, verifying subsidiary companies and grouping related entities, and even match inventors with their respective companies.

To investigate how this works in more detail, check out the IPqwery? Chrome extension and test it out yourself on Crunchbase.

Download (PDF, 212KB)

I’m partial to conundrums, I admit. Which makes this find doubly interesting, as on the surface it looks like a clever and playful take on retail fashion branding and trademarks. Perhaps there is more to it than that?

The case in point is a fascinating example because the most obvious expression of the retail experience is antithetical to most; the brand itself. It’s unabashedly FAKE. No joke, that’s the name! And to prove its veracity there is even an ersatz superscript circle-F at the top-left of the logo (antithetically smart, eh? And soooo NOT top-right!)

According to the meagre publicity I was able to find, the concept here was to offer a counter culture aesthetic/style to a young and urban male generation; one that elicits strong reactions. Many of their clothing products are satirical knockoffs that mock a variety of luxe brands. There are signs that denote FAKE is “faux real” and a “marque de confiance” (a trusted brand). It’s very creative, to be sure. Subversive, even.

What you also need to know is that the entire concept and reality of the establishment has been backed to some degree by a mysterious group called The Medium, a self titled multi-media artist collective. OK, so they’ve got loads of veritable street cred.

But below the surface one realizes that, at some point, the FAKE counter-brand is the brand itself. It has realized the purposefulness of its existence, and come full circle. Subversion, that itself has been subverted (perhaps by its own success). It’s a slippery slope. That’s the conundrum. Is it therefore, still subversive?

In any case, FAKE is fun, and ironically it’s brand centric, despite its best intentions. I can’t help but be humming the Circle Game song (the original, of course).