Patent intelligence for people who don’t read patents
Howmanypatents publishes weekly patent intelligence articles that use patent data to examine what companies are building. I analyse patent portfolios to understand what filings, grants, and trends suggest about technology direction, competitive positioning, and where long-term effort may be focused.
The newsletter is written for people who track companies rather than patents: competitive analysts, market researchers, technology strategists, innovation teams, investors, and technology scouts.
The analysis is typically company-first — the patent data serves the question being asked, not the other way around. Coverage spans a range of technologies and industries, driven by what's topical, newsworthy, or generating wider discussion.
A typical issue may include:
- M&A and divestiture — examining what patent assets are changing hands and what that indicates about the technology capability being transferred.
- Competitive comparisons — placing two or more companies side by side in the same market and examining what their patent portfolios suggest about relative positioning and focus.
- Company portfolios — looking at what a company’s patent filings suggest about its technology direction, where R&D effort appears to be concentrated, and how the portfolio is evolving over time.
- University innovations — looking at patent filings from leading research institutions as one indicator of where early-stage technology development may be moving.
- Emerging technologies — following patent activity in fields such as quantum computing, robotics, AI, and printed or organic electronics.
Subscriptions
Here are the subscription options to access Howmanypatents Newsletter
📰Free: Subscribers will receive
- weekly summary email
- one premium article each month
- occasional free content from the archive
🔓Premium: Subscribers will receive
- Full access to every article, covering all five areas of analysis
- M&A and divestiture
- Competitive comparisons
- Company portfolios
- University innovations
- Emerging technologies
- Deeper, longer analysis that goes beyond the summary
- Full access to the growing archive of previously published articles
- Over time, premium readers don't just stay informed — they develop a sharper eye for what patent activity really signals about companies and technologies
The patent data and analysis
All patent data is sourced directly from the European Patent Office (EPO) master patent database DOCDB each week. All the analytical tools used to analyse, chart and report on patents have been developed in-house.
Disclaimer
This newsletter is for informational purposes only. It is not legal advice, and the author is not a lawyer. Any commentary on patents or companies is opinion only, and should not be relied upon for business, legal, or investment decisions.
This is not legal analysis, and it is not invention-by-invention cataloguing. The focus is on filings rather than individual claims — high-level, contextual interpretation rather than detailed patent law commentary.
About me
I’m Craig Cruickshank, and I write every article.
I’ve spent more than thirty years working in market and technology intelligence. Most recently I was Senior Market Intelligence Analyst at TTP plc, supporting Deep Tech, Healthcare, and Life Science business units with analysis of M&A activity, VC funding trends, competitor positioning, and market dynamics. Prior to TTP, I spent 18 years building and running my own technology and commercial advisory business.
I launched Howmanypatents to apply that experience specifically to patent intelligence — using patent data, presented in context, to add another lens to how companies and technologies can be understood.