Patent ID: 6879990

Claim:
A method for determining potential licensees for a source patent portfolio comprising one or more patents, the method comprising: devising a set of associated patents wherein each patent in the set of associated patents i) cites as a reference a patent in the source patent portfolio or ii) is cited as a reference by a patent in the source patent portfolio; processing all of the patents in the set of associated patents to establish a set of assignees contained in the set of associated patents; establishing a set of remaining assignees by removing from the set of assignees all assignees that are currently licensed; and organizing the set of remaining assignees according to a ranking criteria that causes a higher ranking to be given to any assignee when the following ratio is greater for that assignee than for other assignees, wherein the ranking criteria gives more weight to assignees both i) having patents that have a reference to a patent in the source patent portfolio and ii) having patents that are cited as a reference by a patent in the source patent portfolio; assignee's patents in the set of associated patents: all patents held by assignee.