Here the individual axes rely heavily on citation counts, reference counts, and examiner codes. Looking at the pattern in this figure, there are no exceptional attributes.

However, there are over a half dozen attributes in the B+ range. This is important for negotiation. The sports analogy is that if you have one person with outstanding performance (like having Michael Jordan on your NBA team, or Lionel Messi on your soccer team) you design your whole game strategy around this person.

When you have a portfolio with one outstanding attribute, you design the whole offensive strategy around that strength. If the portfolio, or sports team, does not have a single patent or player around which to build a strategy, you can still build a successful negotiation or a successful team around solid B+ performance from a number of individuals.

Going back to Edward Deming and the Quality movement, if you have a trend line of over seven points increasing in value, even though it has not yet approached the statistical control limit, this is an indicator that something outstanding is happening. The intellectual property corollary to this is that if you find five or more single axes that are in the B+ range, you should build the licensing negotiation strategy around this pattern of B+ performance.

From the figure, we see that a key strength of the company’s portfolio is the number of sharks and predators following it. Sharks are entities that have over 35% of the follow-on citations of a patent, while predators have between 15% and 35% of the follow-on citations. Also unique in this portfolio are the number of international patent classifications, indicating a diversity of technology and uses that the patents cover. In addition, the portfolio scores a B+ for originality from both a scientific publication and a patent standpoint. Completing the picture is the above-average performance of the portfolio on the generality (cited by) scale.

In summary, this portfolio is well suited for licensing-out. There are entities following the portfolio that may want a license to the portfolio’s core grandfather art. The indication of the portfolio’s originality and suggests that it may be licensable in a variety of different industries. Taking all these elements together, this is a valuable portfolio to license.