Patent ownership

Thanks to our collaboration with LexisNexis PatentSight, Reaxys offers full view on who is owning a patent and who has done the invention supporting your need to scout chemistry technology and understand who the players in the field are.

 Here is some support to find your way through the legal terminology:

The patent assignee is the legal entity the patent rights were assigned to (granted). The original assignee of a patent is the legal entity who first got the patent rights, also known as the “applicant” by some authorities in the application stage. The ownership of the patent rights can change over time, e.g. through sale of IP or M&A. Therefore, Reaxys shows the following 3 fields:

• Current Patent Assignee

Also called Immediate Owner

In case of the patent or the whole legal entity being sold (or merged with another one) the legal entity currently holding the property rights to a patent may change. In such a case the Current Patent Assignee will be different from the Original Patent Assignee. (see example below)

This information is updated in Reaxys on a weekly basis.

• Ultimate Owner

A company can have shareholders. An Ultimate Owner has no known majority shareholder and owns patent families that belong to its portfolio either directly or through its group companies, subsidiaries, and/or associate companies. (Each being majority-owned by the Ultimate Owner who holds at least 50% of shares.)

•  Original Patent Assignee

Also called Original Applicant

The Original Patent Assignee of a patent is the legal entity to whom the property rights were granted for the first time.

Lexis Nexis PatentSight applies the following way of determining the Ultimate Owner:

We harmonize applicant, assignee and reassignee names along with misspellings, misleading, transcriptions and transliteration variants. This approach is also applied for research and governmental institutions as well as non-profit organizations.

For more details about ownership definition by Lexis Nexis Data Harmonization and Ownership Information (lexisnexisip.com)