Identifying and Assessing the Patent Landscape for L4/L5 Autonomous Vehicle Technologies – Q2 2021 Update
Background
In Q1 of this year Tech+IP Advisory (www.techip.cc) launched its first report analyzing the state of Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicle (“AV”) patents (detailed report here). In addition to committing to quarterly publication given the fast-moving pace of the industry, the report was researched and published with several goals in mind:
· We sought to standardize terminology used by patent practitioners with terminology widely adopted by the engineering community as reflected by the Society of Automotive Engineers’ AV taxonomy[1];
· We intended to bring full transparency to the patent landscape process (a process borrowed from academic literature) by publishing the query strings and methodology such that a 3rd party could fully reproduce the data and results, and then critique them or improve on them with their own work and insights;
· We took a global point of view and used some admittedly “rough cut” methods to assess potential patent strength (fully admitting that “eyes on claims” is a much preferred, but much more expensive, undertaking); and
· Perhaps most importantly, we invited comments and feedback from the larger community of engineers and patent practitioners to gain feedback from individuals and groups that are expert in the field and share our core belief that it is through a common set of terms and lexicon (the business person’s equivalent of a common system of weights and measures) that the field moves forward. And, in this case, by field we mean the securing of patents as an incentive for and product of fundamental research and development at great expense and with great risk.
The full Q1 2021 report is here and a synopsis of the report was published by leading industry journal IAM is here. What follows is Tech+IP Advisory’s Q2 2021 report.
Feedback and Improvements
We are pleased to report that Tech+IP received and continues to receive valuable feedback from a host of sources, perhaps most importantly representatives of a number of Companies that are very active in the patenting of AV technologies globally. Some of that feedback focused on ways to improve the search algorithm to generate more accurate results and better separate false positives from false negatives, while others centered on why did we limit the charts and rankings to 25 or 50 companies. The comments we heard most consistently, however, were “why did you focus only on 2015 to the present?” and “we think there was some important work done in AV technologies by a small set of companies earlier than 2015.” Tech+IP is working to integrate all the feedback into the landscape process, but the date expansion comments seemed both insightful and easy to remedy and we have done that for this report.
When Tech+IP ran the research with the expanded date range and reviewed the results, it became clear that the patent “priority date” curve very much matched an innovation curve of 5 year waves (7 years looked to be too long given the sharp increases in the curve); and thus we have decided to break the results into 5 year segments on a go forward basis that we believe reflects distinct eras in L4/L5 innovation. (The comments on the core algorithm itself were excellent as well, but given the complexity of implementation we have chosen to publish that in the 2d half of the year).
This Q2 2021 report updates the landscape for patents that have issued or been published that have inventions dates for the period from January 1, 2010 through March 31, 2021 and sets out categorization of such patents into 3 distinct periods:
· 2010 – 2014 (we call this the “Pioneer Phase”)
· 2015 – 2019 (we call this the “R&D Phase”)
· 2020 – Present (we call this the “Productization Gen 1 Phase”)
Key Takeaways
- Reflecting the comments of readers, Tech+IP has decided to show a full Company Overview list in the Level 4 and Level 5 space for complete transparency. It is on our website here.
- In starting the analysis on January 1, 2010, the search revealed approximately 2,400 additional patents and some clear “Pioneer Phase” leading companies: Waymo (17% of the patents in the Pioneer Phase), followed by Ford ( at 5%), and Porsche, Bosch, Toyota, and Cruise at approximately 4% each. Full list here.
- Patent Activity in Q1 2021 compared to Q4 2020 has shown a decrease in patent activity by 7% quarter over quarter. The top 5 most active companies in the period from Jan – Apr 2021 are Waymo, LGE, Toyota, Porsche, and Hyundai, which on a combined basis hold 25% of the total number of patents in the subject quarter. It should be noted, as well, that a number of M&A activities that took place recently will be integrated into future reports as patent assignments and transfers occur. These will include, for example, Lyft’s driverless unit sale to Toyota [2], Cruise’s acquisition of Voyage [3], Uber’s sale of its driverless car unit to Aurora Innovations [4], and others.
Patent Landscape Analysis:
The fully updated Company Overview Landscape list is available on the Tech+IP website here.
In reviewing the results, please importantly note that while the team performs manual spot checks on results involving the “top 50” companies and their patents for each phase (e.g., the Pioneer Phase, R&D Phase, and Productization Gen 1 Phase) such spot checks are not performed for the remainder of the results due to resource constraints. We encourage readers to provide feedback where warranted on any of that data to help improve the results.
Pioneer Phase (2010-2014)
The Pioneer Phase of Level 4 and Level 5 technology comprises approximately 450 companies and comprises approximately 2,400 active patents. Waymo holds a strong pole lead given their early emphasis on R&D coupled with an experienced patent team, coming in at 17% of the total number of patents and more than three times the patents of any other company. Ford follows Waymo in the 2010-2014 Pioneer Phase, and Porsche, Bosch, Cruise, and Toyota at patentees 3-6. After these 6 companies, the concentration is much more diffuse.
As might be expected, the addition of patents with priority years 2010 – 2014 also significantly affected overall ranks (Cumulative 2010 – Present), with, for example, Waymo moving from 9th to 3rd place and Toyota dropping from 2nd to 4th. The major patent activity in this Pioneer Phase was in the US with 43% of all patents, followed by Europe with 23%, and “APAC x-CN” (China excluded) with 18%. It is interesting that in the US, CN, and APAC x-CN regions, Waymo is the top patent owner, while in the EU, Porsche is a leader with Bosch holding 2nd place.
R&D Phase (2015-2019)
Our so-called “R&D Phase” represents the period from 2015 through 2019 and, as expected, is a period of rapidly increasing patent activity. According to the Tech+IP methodology, there are approximately 1,800 companies that have at least one patent in Level 4 and Level 5 technology during the R&D Phase. This time period also saw the addition of a number of new companies not earlier represented, such as Stradvision, Tusimple, Lyft, Nvidia, and DeepMap.
Note that patents in the R&D Phase (all having eariest invention dates between 2015 and 2019) continue to be published Q1 2021 and therefore these numbers continue to accumulate as would be expected. (e.g., patent with priority year 2016 (from R&D Phase) published in Q1 2021). To put a fineer point on this, Tech+IP analyzed the impact of these extra 3 months of patent publication results on the data we presented last quarter. The chart below presents these “deltas.”
All companies from the above chart have more than 15 published patents as of the close of Q1 2021 and the percentage shows an increase or decrease number of published patents based on the differences in published patents in this Phase based on the additonal 3 months of publications.
Some of the better known companies in the AV industry -- such as Uber, Honda, Bosch, Cruise, and BMW – had a slowed down pace of published patents in the R&D Phase time frame and Nissan, Stradvision, PlusAI, Nio, and Aptiv had no further such patents published. Tech+IP will continue to track, observe, and analyze these companies in further report updates to see if this is an anomaly or find the cause of a sudden stop in patent activity.
Productization Gen 1 Phase (2020-Present)
According to nearly all experts, the next five years will see the full scale launch of the AV car. We call this Productization Gen 1, and it is evident that this process is well underway – with Waymo and Cruise in the US [5], Baidu in China [6], and Cruise in the Arabian Peninsula by 2023 [7]. According to Tech+IP’s research (and data provided by Innography), the following companies are leaders in patents from 2020 to present. (Note that so called “inventors” – individuals without recorded assignments to a company – represent that largest number of patents in this period.) If history repeats itself in the manner that it has for other technologies, one would expect this “self held” number to diminish relatively rapidly over the period, including potentially to organizations often referred to as “Non-Practicing Entities” (“NPEs”) that specialize in patent licensing.
Cumulative Analysis
The following chart takes a cumulative view of the entire period of January 2020 to the present. (As earlier noted, Innography data indicates that shows that approximately 6% of the patents (1,251 such patents) are not at present assigned to any corporation and belong solely to the inventors.
A piece of information that bears watching became evident in our analysis this quarter. It relates to published patent applications -- and, as you may recall in the previous report, we noted that a large number of patent applications may be unpublished due to the 18 months rule. Indeed, in this quarter a large number of applications were published – and so much so that we saw 2019 patents increase by 25% and 2020 increase by 24%. We expect to see this as a recurring theme and will incorporate it into quarterly results.
In addition, our review uncovered some interesting data concerning State Farm. A number of State Farm applications were published during the first quarter of 2021 that carry the earliest priority dates going all the way back to 2010. This publishing of the State Farm continuation practice dramatically changed results in the Pioneer Phase – with Stae farm holding 7th place – and a cumulative ranking of 25.
Sources
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36364986/sae-updates-refines-autonomous-driving-levels-chart/
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/uber-sells-atg-self-driving-unit-to-aurora-.html
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/15/22331794/cruise-acquires-voyage-self-driving-car-merger
[4] https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/15/22331794/cruise-acquires-voyage-self-driving-car-merger
[7] https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/12/cruise-strikes-deal-to-launch-robotaxi-service-in-dubai/