With 109 U.S. patents granted in 2014, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) recently recognized Nielsen as ranking number 284 on its annual list of the top 300 U.S. patent recipients. The IPO reviewed more than 7,500 companies in the process.
“Nielsen takes innovation seriously,” said Gene Potkay, senior vice president, intellectual property, Nielsen. “In just the last seven years, we’ve grown our U.S. patent holdings by more than six times, and we are clearly the undisputed leader in patent holdings within our core areas of business—market and audience measurement and reporting. More noteworthy is that we never set out to hit this milestone as our first focus is upon driving quality patent filings, not numbers.”
To date, Nielsen holds more than 500 granted U.S. patents, has another 500-plus U.S. applications pending and boasts more than 2,350 patents and pending applications globally.
For more than 90 years, Nielsen has delivered the currency for reliable market and audience measurement all over the world. As we move headlong into an era of unprecedented media fragmentation, the competition will be fierce to serve these new market demands with new, innovative approaches to measurement and ratings.
Making the IPO’s Top 300 of U.S. Patent Recipients list in 2014 highlights Nielsen’s commitment to innovation. Our invention pipeline, patent filings and U.S. patents granted, has grown in both numbers and quality year over year and is much deeper than other competitive players in the industry. It’s further indicative of Nielsen’s commitment to delivering new commercially important products and services to clients in an effort to transform itself and the industry.
Beyond patents, many experts would agree that a company whose R&D efforts generate a pipeline of new commercially successful products and solutions should be regarded as innovative. For Nielsen, a few recent and notable examples include our Digital Ad Ratings, One Global Reference Data System (OGRDS) and Twitter TV Ratings. Patent protection only adds further support to that claim.
“Innovative companies are expected to introduce new products and services at a rapid pace,” said Potkay, “and our shareholders expect that we protect these new developments.”
“Nielsen faces the added challenge to deliver solutions that bridge both today’s client needs for currency grade measurement while anticipating a global consumer landscape that is undergoing unprecedented change at an unprecedented pace,” Potkay said. “Being granted a record 109 U.S. patents in one year despite tougher patent requirements is but one proof point that we’re moving in the right direction.”
