Opportunity score and follow-on tiers

Lapsight publishes the ranking model so subscribers can disagree with it. The score is a research ranking of public USPTO fields. It is not legal advice, a valuation, or a recommendation to file.

Opportunity score (0–100)

Weighted sum of min-max / log-normalized features:

• Forward citations, log1p capped at 80 — 25%
• Family size, log1p capped at 20 — 15%
• Claim count (or independent-claim proxy) — 10%
• Remaining would-be statutory term if the patent had not lapsed — 20%
• Technology neighborhood commercial density — 10%
• Recency of the lapse date — 10%
• Assignee type (university / government / individual vs large corporate) — 10%

Remaining term uses 20 years from filing for applications on or after 8 June 1995, otherwise 17 years from grant. Patent term adjustment and extension are not modeled.

Follow-on difficulty

A separate pressure counter (citations, family size, claim count, crowded prefixes, large assignee, short remaining term) maps to:

• Tier 1 Clean Path (default): pressure 0–1
• Tier 2 Some Pushback: pressure 2–3
• Tier 3 Hard Fight Worth It: pressure 4+ and score at least 45

Implementation: src/lib/scoring.ts and src/lib/tiering.ts. Tests lock the heuristics in tests/scoring.test.ts.