Capturing and Tracking Performance of Patent Portfolio Using $h$ -Complement Area Centroid

Assuming that only the bibliometric information contained in patent databases is available and that the citations received by a patent indicate the patent´s value or quality, we propose to characterize the performance of a patent assignee´s patent portfolio, in terms of both the quantity and quality of its cited and uncited patents, by the centroid of a so-called h-complement area from the assignee´s citation distribution. This approach is capable of producing a snapshot to a large number of assignees´ portfolio performance by simultaneously depicting their h-complement area centroids in a 2-D graph. With this 2-D view, these assignees´ relative performance, where the performance difference lies, and the degree of such difference can also be quickly determined. In addition, a trajectory manifesting the evolution of an assignee´s portfolio performance over a window of time can be obtained by connecting the h-complement area centroids at successive epochs within the time window. The pattern revealed by the trajectory provides significant insight into how the assignee´s portfolio performance has varied over time. When there is some abrupt pattern change, an analyst should be alarmed to conduct further investigation. A steady pattern, on the other hand, allows forecast to the assignee´s future performance.