Time travel: The top 10 most valuable patent owners in Germany. One of them is particularly surprising.
The following video shows the top 10 German companies with the most valuable patents over a period of 17 years in time lapse. Anyone who suspects the "usual suspects" or believes that they are always the same names will be surprised.
In 2008, Deutsche Bank AG suddenly app in the list of the top 10 most valuable patent holders and rises to 7th place. Has Deutsche Bank suddenly become a technology company? Or is it intensively researching and developing in the field of cybercrime? A closer look reveals that the patent portfolio values are very volatile compared to the other companies. For example, Deutsche Bank AG suddenly disappears from the ranking in 2010, only to reappear in 2014, move up to fifth place and disappear again just as quickly a year later. Deutsche Bank reappears from 2016 to 2020. Each time, the patent values vary greatly.
So, what makes Deutsche Bank so innovative, or rather: where does Deutsche Bank get all its (valuable) patents from? Interestingly, there is not even a pronounced focus on technology - the company appears to be extremely diversified. A look at the individual intellectual property rights provides an explanation: Deutsche Bank has apparently pledged patents as collateral for its loans. None of the patents listed are based on its own inventions.
A successful business model, it seems. According to own research, the likelihood of a small company defaulting on a loan decreases by a factor of at least 34 if it owns a valuable patent portfolio. For bigger companies, the default risk for valuable patent owners is even smaller.
In general, the pledging of patents as collateral is not an exotic novelty. The Deutsche Bank example shows that it has been common financing practice for more than 15 years to pledge intangible assets as collateral for financing. More and more countries are even setting up funds to cover potential IP-related defaults (e.g. USA, Singapore, South Korea, Canada). However, we ourselves were surprised by the intensity of Deutsche Bank's approach.
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