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When it comes to patent portfolios, it's all about quality not quantity. NC State Ranked #9 amongst all US universities, ahead of UNC-Chapel Hill and Georgia Tech and Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and Columbia.

How did NC State come out on top as a leader in patent portfolios?

Each school is scored on four indicators that figure out their patent pipeline power. The first indicator is "Pipeline Growth" which demonstrates the growth trend in an organization's patent activity by dividing the number of patents obtained in 2005 by the annual average for the years 2000 through 2004. "Pipeline Impact", the second indicator, shows how frequently patents issued in 2005 cite a company's patents issued from 2000 through 2004 -- this metric is based on citations both from the organization itself and from other organizations. "Pipeline Generality" measures the variety of technologies that build upon an organization's patents. In other words, its observes how often patents are cited by other patents in different fields -- showing the patent's use outside of its field. The final indicator, "Pipeline Originality",  records the variety of technologies upon which an organization's patents build, based on the concept that inventions created by combining ideas from several different technologies tend to be more original than those that make incremental improvements upon the same technology. Together, these measurements are used to rank the quality of an institution's patent portfolio.

To read more about the world's most valuable patent portfolios click here.