Company
Lucent Technologies		2485/1	1701/2	1445	881	1.72	1.93	1.31	1.78	5.4	5.4
Motorola		2035/2	2148/1	1241	1193	1.64	1.80	0.63	0.76	5.4	5.5
Ericsson Telephone		1651/3	714/3	775	320	2.13	2.23	0.99	1.32	5.2	5.8
BCE		1024/4	369/5	472	179	2.17	2.06	0.89	1.09	4.8	4.9
AT&T		875/5	566/4	343	135	2.55	4.18	1.07	1.12	4.6	4.8
Nokia		630/6	259/8	306	163	2.06	1.59	0.49	0.53	5.3	5.3
Alcatel		478/7	319/7	423	285	1.13	1.12	0.79	1.06	6.4	6.7
Qualcomm		451/8	350/6	111	63	4.06	5.56	0.71	1.47	6.7	6.4
Verizon Communications		375/9	147/11	93	74	4.03	1.99	0.73	1.75	5.9	6.1
Cabletron Systems		253/10	116/12	41	17	6.18	6.98	2.00	2.39	5.2	4.5
MCI Worldcom		216/11	193/10	82	63	2.64	3.05	0.99	1.13	4.7	4.6
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone		168/12	204/9	127	120	1.32	1.70	2.04	2.15	4.6	5.0
Ciena		109/13	30/17	26	6	4.18	4.61	1.73	1.97	5.0	4.1
JDS Uniphase		100/14	57/15	52	36	1.93	1.61	2.21	1.31	7.1	7.5
Qwest Communications International		97/15	105/13	29	33	3.33	3.16	0.34	1.13	4.1	5.0
British Telecommunications		95/16	78/14	70	60	1.35	1.31	3.36	3.54	6.5	5.9
BellSouth		92/17	52/16	27	19	3.42	2.80	0.30	0.45	5.1	5.7

*average

Indexing Innovation

Technology Review has teamed with CHI Research of Haddon Heights, NJ, to produce the Patent Scorecard, an industry-by-industry ranking of corporate patent portfolios. CHI combines the number of a firm’s patents with other indicators to flesh out this deeper picture of innovation. Here are the specifics:

Technology Strength: This figure, the basis of the rankings, provides an overall assessment of a firm’s intellectual-property power. It is calculated by multiplying the number of a company’s U.S. patents by its Current Impact Index (see below).

Number of Patents: The total number of U.S. patents awarded, excluding design and other special-case inventions.

Current Impact Index: This measure showcases the broader significance of a company’s patents by examining how often its U.S. patents from the previous five years are cited as “prior art” in the current year’s batch. A value of 1.0 represents average citation frequency; so 1.4 would indicate a company’s patents were cited 40 percent more often than average, and so on.

Science Linkage: Patents sometimes cite scientific papers as prior art. This value shows the average number of science references listed in a company’s U.S. patents. A high figure indicates the company is closer to the cutting edge than its competitors.

Technology Cycle Time: An indicator of a firm’s speed in turning leading-edge technology into intellectual property, defined as the median age (in years) of the U.S. patents cited as prior art in the company’s patents.