Analyzing patent characteristics and business strategies of non-practicing entities

The operation of non-practicing entities (NPEs) has been denounced, the influences of NPEs are more and more significant on the economy, society and technology. The objective of this paper is to characterize patents owned by selected famous NPE corporations. A total of 12 NPEs with 4,947 utility patents are analyzed in this paper from four aspects: (1) country, (2) industry, (3) corporates, and (4) valuation assertion. Moreover, in the valuation assertion section, 11 patent characteristics are used as indicators for evaluating NPE patents. This paper also compares the degree of patent value among NPE patents, litigated patents and ITC patents in the most significant 6 patent characteristics. One important finding is that NPE patents are verified as more valuable patents than litigated patents and ITC patents. However, No. of patent citation received (also called No. of forward citation; CI), does not show positive relation as other patent indicators do. In summary, this paper offers three major contributions: (1) using 4,947 NPE patents from 1976 to 2012 as sample patents, (2) measuring NPE patents value by 11 patent characteristics and (3) showing that NPE patents are more valuable than litigated patents and ITC patents.