What this article covers
- Explains how patent strength is defined and measured in PatentSight+ using the Patent Asset Index framework.
- Introduces the four core metrics: Patent Asset Index (PAI), Competitive Impact (CI), Technology Relevance (TR), and Market Coverage (MC) and how they relate to each other.
- Shows how to interpret each metric, from overall portfolio strength down to individual patent families and their underlying drivers.
- Clarifies how technological impact (citations) and geographic protection (market coverage) combine to determine patent value.
- Provides a practical framework for using these metrics in executive discussions, benchmarking, and portfolio analysis.
Understanding Patent Strength in PatentSight+®
How Patent Strength Is Calculated in PatentSight+
Understanding the Relationship Between the Metrics
The role of data preparation behind the metrics
Understanding Patent Strength in PatentSight+®
The Patent Asset Index (known as PAI) is a scientifically developed, objective metric used in LexisNexis® PatentSight+® (PS+) to evaluate the strength and value of a patent or patent portfolio. It is measured through a set of connected metrics that explain both how strong a portfolio is and why:
- Patent Asset Index (PAI): Overall portfolio strength
- Competitive Impact (CI): Strength of individual patent families
- Technology Relevance (TR): Technical influence (citations)
- Market Coverage (MC): Economic footprint (geographic protection)
Together, these metrics let you move from a high-level view of portfolio value (Patent Asset Index) to identifying the key patents (Competitive Impact), and understanding what drives their strength (Technology Relevance and Market Coverage).
This structure is what makes the Patent Asset Index methodology useful for analysts and executives. If you want to know whether your portfolio is strong overall, look at Patent Asset Index. If you want to know which inventions are driving that strength, look at Competitive Impact. If you want to understand why those inventions are strong, look one level deeper at Technology Relevance and Market Coverage.
Seen together, the four measures provide a practical way to discuss innovation strength, from technical importance (Technology Relevance) and economic footprint (Market Coverage), to patent family strength (Competitive Impact) and overall portfolio strength (Patent Asset Index).
That is why these are best understood as linked measures, not standalone numbers. They allow PatentSight users to move from a board-level discussion about portfolio strength to a more detailed view of which patents matter most, and why.
How Patent Strength Is Calculated in PatentSight+®
Patent strength in PS+ is primarily determined by two key factors:
- Technological impact – whether other patents build upon the invention. The Technology Relevance (TR) metric in PatentSight+ measures how often a patent is cited by later patents, indicating its influence on future technological developments.
- Geographical protection – the breadth of jurisdictions in which the patent is protected. The Market Coverage (MC) metric in PatentSight+ reflects the size and importance of the markets where the patent is protected.
In general, a patent is considered stronger when it both:
- Influences subsequent innovations (i.e. is cited by later patents), and
- Is protected across multiple markets
By multiplying Technology Relevance and Market Coverage, the Competitive Impact provides a balanced view of both the technological importance and economic potential of a patent, reflecting the strength of the individual patent family.
The Patent Asset Index is then calculated as the sum of Competitive Impact across all patent families in a portfolio, reflecting overall portfolio strength.
How to Interpret the Metrics
Each measure matters because each answers a different management question:
Technology Relevance asks: How important is this technology?
Market Coverage asks: Where does this patent matter?
Competitive Impact asks: How strong is this patent family overall?
Patent Asset Index asks: How strong is this portfolio?
A high Technology Relevance score points to patent families that appear especially important from a technological perspective. Because it is normalized for field and age, it is useful when you want to identify inventions that stand out against their true peer group, not just patents that happen to be old or heavily cited in citation-rich jurisdictions.
A high Market Coverage score points to patent families with protection across economically important markets. It is useful when you want to understand geographic protection strategy, market reach, and the economic footprint of a portfolio.
A high Competitive Impact score points to individual patent families that combine both dimensions well. This makes CI useful for identifying key patents for strategy, licensing, portfolio review, and risk-focused analysis. Competitive Impact can be used as the basis for value distribution and ranking approaches that distinguish stronger from weaker patent families within a portfolio.
A high Patent Asset Index points to a portfolio with substantial aggregate strength. Because PAI is the sum of CI, it is well suited to benchmarking companies, comparing patent sets, and tracking portfolio performance over time. The Patent Asset Index can be calculated not only for an owner’s whole portfolio, but also for any selected set of patent families, such as a technology-specific patent population.
Use Cases
These measures are tied to common use cases in PatentSight+ such as benchmarking, portfolio optimization, trend analysis, geographic footprint analysis, and identifying high-value or pruning candidates. For example, Patent Asset Index trend views support competitive benchmarking over time, while geographic analyses help evaluate where a company is protecting its IP.
Understanding the Relationship Between the Metrics
These are not competing metrics. They are layered measures.
Technology Relevance reflects technical importance.
Market Coverage reflects economic reach.
Competitive Impact combines both to show the strength of a patent family.
Patent Asset Index aggregates those strengths to show overall portfolio value.
That distinction is important for interpretation. A patent family can be technologically important but only protected in a limited set of markets. It may then show strong Technology Relevance but more modest Competitive Impact. Conversely, a patent family can have broad market reach but not stand out as strongly on the technology side. Competitive Impact brings both perspectives together, while Patent Asset Index moves one level higher to show how those strengths accumulate across a portfolio.
This is why PAI is especially useful in executive discussions. It provides a single view of overall portfolio strength, while still allowing a drilldown into the reasons behind that score. If a portfolio’s PAI is rising, leaders can then ask whether that is being driven by stronger individual assets, broader market footprint, more inventions, or a mix of all three.
A useful executive interpretation is:
- TR helps answer: Are we building technology that stands out?
- MC helps answer: Are we protecting that technology where it matters economically?
- CI helps answer: Which inventions are the strongest assets in this set?
- PAI helps answer: How strong is the portfolio overall versus peers or over time?
The role of data preparation behind the metrics
The methodology depends on more than the formulas alone. Patent documents must first be organized into patent families, with information such as legal status and ownership determined before applying the metrics. Ownership is harmonized using the Ultimate Owner concept, which consolidates patent families at the current owner level and takes into account corporate structures, reassignments, mergers, acquisitions, former names, and similar variants. This is important because portfolio analysis is only meaningful if the portfolio is attributed to the correct owner.
PatentSight also uses the Reporting Date concept to support historical analysis. For any selected Reporting Date, only information that was available at that point in time is considered for calculating PatentSight metrics. This allows users to analyze historical portfolio strength and trends without hindsight, although ownership is always shown using the current Ultimate Owner.
Key Takeaways
Patent strength in PatentSight+ is best understood as a set of linked metrics. Patent Asset Index shows overall portfolio strength, Competitive Impact highlights the most important patent families, and Technology Relevance and Market Coverage explain the drivers behind that strength. Technology Relevance reflects a patent’s influence on future technological developments, while Market Coverage reflects the size and importance of the markets where the patent is protected.
Together, they provide a structured way to assess innovation from high-level performance down to individual assets.